


Without the Skin Attached

by Faerlie_certain



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Has No Chill, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Body Horror (Noah), Boys Speaking Latin, Camping, Canon Gay Relationship, Canon Het Relationship, Canon Related, Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Religion, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death In Dream, Dream Logic, Dream Sex, Dream Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Drug Use, Explicit Language, Exploring Ronan's Subconscious, Fluff and Angst, Gaelic Language, Gaelic Lore, Gay Panic, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Marijuana, Mentions of Attempted Suicide, Mutual Pining, Not Canon Compliant, POV Adam Parrish, POV Ronan Lynch, Prayer, Ronan Lynch & Religion, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Softness, Tenderness, Timeline What Timeline, mentions of abuse, secret keeping, working on cars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 43,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23334460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faerlie_certain/pseuds/Faerlie_certain
Summary: Memories and emotions and sensations mix, guided by the touch of careful hands to scars and pain and loss. Ronan finds every piece of Adam visible and soothes it and Adam creeps his hands under Ronan’s shirt, looking for hidden hurts. Ronan brings his mouth to the side of Adam’s head and he feels lips on his deaf ear. Impossibly, he hears the air leave Ronan’s nose when he pulls away. Ronan’s eyes are closed when he comes back into view and Adam is glad for it. He doesn’t know what’s happening on his face and he’s afraid of what Ronan might find there if he sees.Part folktale, part love story.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 189
Kudos: 169





	1. Chapter 1

It starts like this:

A close-lipped smile, arms crossed over one another, head lolled to the left. A body held up only by the shoulder next to it, a seatbelt barely maintaining its functionality. Deep, undisturbed breaths coming and going, ghosting warmth over Adam’s chest, framed by a sunset in the back of a nuclear-vomit-colored vintage Camaro. The jagged edge of a tattoo clambering for purchase up and out from under the collar of a shirt. 

Adam wondering what it looks like up close, but content with wondering. Realizing he’s staring, ripping his eyes away. 

Gansey and Blue trying to make sense of a map in the front seat, their voices fading into the background. Ronan shifting, pressing his face into the side of Adam’s neck, Adam’s heart doing a little skip in his chest. 

_Oh,_ Adam thinks, helpless.

 _Oh, so this_ _is what it feels like..._

Reality crashes down over Adam Parrish's head and he hopes Ronan isn’t awake enough to feel his pulse getting faster. Hopes it doesn’t show too clearly on his face. He closes his eyes, wondering how convincingly he could fake sleep. But then Ronan swears under his breath in Latin when Gansey hits a pothole and there’s a frenzy of activity in the front of the car, saving Adam from his thoughts as Ronan gingerly reassembles his limbs into a different position, leaning more of his weight on Adam, less skin against his neck.

Adam thanks whoever's listening for the opportunity to breathe. 

Ronan mumbles something else, cracks a knuckle against his leg. Adam laughs softly, a little hysterical. Sometimes when Ronan speaks Latin, it’s so natural that Adam forgets it isn't English. He could almost swear it came first. Before thinking. Before breathing. _Certainly_ before grammar. 

Sometimes Ronan whispers it to himself, secretive in tone but not in content. Sometimes he gets stuck on a syllable or a word and repeats it, feverishly, until it feels right in his mouth. Sometimes he’s commenting on the goddamn weather. Sometimes Adam catches himself on the cusp of responding in some way, interjecting something between syllables when Ronan whispers loud enough.

The one time he’d let himself, Ronan had given him such a withering look he’d left him alone about it for the time being.

Teasing Ronan Lynch feels dangerous. So do those looks he seems to reserve only for Adam. But knowing little, secret things about the other boy _is_ dangerous. Knowledge is a flame. And any knowledge at all of Ronan Lynch is a spark that could quickly become a forest fire if Adam’s not careful. It’s out of the question to simply file it away to deal with later. Everything Adam knows about him is immediate, life-altering, and all-consuming. A piece of glass lodged in his chest waiting to kill him should he wait too long to dig it out. Decisions about this knowledge must be equally immediate and final in nature. Burn it to ashes. Bury it in the ground. Plant it between his ribs. Use it against Ronan somehow to warrant himself another one of those _looks._

Gansey’s eyes flicker to where Ronan rests his head from the rearview, a hand positioned innocently close to Adam’s thigh, and clears his throat.

Adam raises an eyebrow. Gansey’s cheeks go red.

 _Gansey, on the other hand,_ Adam thinks, smiling to himself, _is a whole other animal._

Gansey’s been sneaking touches with Blue for weeks. All the while sending Adam _looks_ of his own, probably in regards to their now shared piece of history that goes by the name of Blue Sargent. Gansey is many things. Fearful. Brilliant. Seventeen. But he is not subtle. So really, in Adam’s opinion, he has no right to appear scandalized. But Adam is curious. So he looks. 

What he sees is this:

Ronan seated to Adam’s right while Adam himself is somehow miraculously crammed into whatever remains of the middle seat after what spills over from the following:

  * their backpacks 
  * an EMF reader 
  * more maps 
  * old, suspicious pizza boxes 
  * miscellaneous piles of Gansey’s shit



He laughs. Because it’s funny.

“Noli oblivisci mei,” Ronan sighs into his shoulder, barely the thought of a whisper, and something in Adam’s heart melts. His shoulder is warm from where Ronan is leaning against it, his breath sending more warmth down to Adam’s chest. 

Adam sighs, closes his eyes. No matter which way he argues this with himself, he can’t argue against the bare reality that Gansey sees in the rearview: one boy sleeping against another in the backseat of a car. And if he really wanted to, regardless of the pizza boxes, Adam would move. 

But Adam doesn’t move. He lets himself be slept on and tries to pretend it doesn’t mean anything. 

He curses this feeling. He curses his craving for it. He curses that it won’t last forever. That one day he’ll have to lift himself out of this car and return to an existence where warmth is shitty gas station coffee between shifts and not another boy’s breath on his skin. He curses Ronan for doing this to him. He curses himself for letting it happen. He tries to break Ronan’s body into separate pieces to curse and feels his face grow hot. He curses it all. 

_Nunquam_ , Adam returns in his head, as Ronan gently pushes his face back into Adam’s neck. Adam breathes out and swallows and tries not to get too caught up in things he can’t afford to have. Ronan’s mouth falls open, slack-jawed with sleep. Adam’s skin burns. He looks out the window. 

_Nunquam. Non possum oblivisci._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> —-
> 
> Latin: 
> 
> “Don’t forget me.” 
> 
> “Never.” 
> 
> “Never. I can’t forget."  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

Ronan doesn't exactly advertise the fact that he has a tattoo. For Declan's benefit? Oh, absolutely. But for the rest of the world it’s practically an urban legend.

Ronan’s tattoo is almost as raw and untouchable as everything else about the brothers Lynch. The fact that anyone would get such a drastic and painstaking mural poked into their own flesh would be noteworthy. Even more so that no one besides Richard Campbell Gansey III can pinpoint exactly when he got it. Several students have at some point or another approached either Gansey or Ronan with questions regarding the inking process, the specific design, or who the artist had been. Depending on who they asked and how pushy they'd been about it, experiencing varying levels of success. Part of the artistry is usually peeking out of Ronan's collar from any and every angle he's visible. The two facts most students at Aglionby can agree on are the following: 

1\. There's no easy way to hide it in school pictures (much to Aglionby faculty's disdain). 

2\. He completed it in one sitting (like an actual goddamn walking legend). 

And the pieces of him _unavailable_ to the general public are known intimately and often violently by those he trusts. One such thing: the urban legend running along the length of his spine covers a series of deep, sizeable scars that appear to have at one time been life-threatening. Adam Parrish didn’t mean to come by this knowledge. But now that he has, it is a knowledge explored inside of him intimately, violently, and often. He wants to know how they got there, mythic like the tattoo itself. Every branch an untold story he isn't sure he has permission to hear. And now Adam even wonders about the ones Ronan hasn't covered with ink. The grisly, uneven ridges hidden under the leather bands on his right arm. The indentations on either side of his rib cage, puncture wounds caused by something sharp and vicious. A thin, barely visible line separating one half of his eyebrow from the other. One below his knee that appears to be the result of a childhood bicycle accident, evidence of sutures on either side of the damaged tissue, stretching and contracting when Ronan walks. Deep scratch marks, now turned white with sun and age traveling up his forearms like something giant with claws had taken hold of him and not intended to let go. Those in particular had always interested Adam because of their symmetry. Upon being introduced to one another by an entirely too enthusiastic Richard Campbell Gansey III, Adam had just assumed Ronan was into some vaguely beautiful form of scarification. 

The first time Adam has the privilege to see the whole tattoo is on a night when Ronan spends one of his increasingly frequent nights on the floor of Adam's St. Agnes apartment. If Adam tries to explain how it ended up happening that way later, he’ll fail. Ronan shows up sometimes for reasons that make sense at the time and then just sort of remains for several hours for reasons that are never vocalized, but somehow still agreed upon by the both of them. On this particular muggy August evening, Adam is curled around a notebook on his bed, busying himself with an essay due the next day during class. The one he supposedly shares with Ronan, but haven't since the first day witnessed him attend. He occasionally wonders if driving him to Aglionby personally and saving him a seat would do the trick.

Adam tries to breathe through his frustration when sweat from his nose drips onto his assignment. It doesn't matter how many times he reaches up to drag a sleeve down his face. The apartment can rarely be called temperature controlled, even in the winter when the whole building is subjected to a forced air system. Adam looks over with envy at the other boy’s lack of shame as he rips off his shirt and drags it over his head and face before balling it up to use as a pillow.

Adam sighs. Frustrated. With what, he hasn't fully figured out. Adam does his homework in the heat in this very corner of his sad excuse for a bed every night after work. Tonight should be no different. He manages to keep his eyes on his essay for maybe ten more seconds, eyes going blurry in protest, before they roam to the only thing interesting thing in sight. Ronan Lynch, resting peacefully on his side, his back to Adam on the mattress. He can't be comfortable like that, but he's never complained. Sometimes Adam wants to give him something to complain about. He shuts that line of thought down before it has a chance to take him anywhere he doesn't feel like going this late on a school night.

Adam’s never seen it before. Not really. And what could it hurt? And not only that, Ronan has yet again failed to ask him for permission before settling down for the night _on his floor_ without so much as rudely demanding a pillow. 

Adam’s eyes drag themselves over to Ronan’s exposed skin equally without his permission, hungrily memorizing what little they can see in the low light beside his bed. But what is there to see? What is there to memorize? It's not as if Adam hasn't seen a boy before. But still, there's something to it. Something to the black lines interrupting otherwise untouched skin. A contradiction. A visual argument between pale and dark. It’s not until Ronan shifts in his sleep that Adam notices how long he’s been looking and he forces himself to stop. But maybe that's worse because why would that really be out of the question?

_If he wanted me to see him like this…_

But it isn’t true. There's no reason Adam shouldn't simply be able to look at one of his friends and Ronan's the one who removed his shirt. He has to have let Gansey or Noah put lotion on his back for months. Even though Adam’s never witnessed Ronan offer even a glance to anybody, he certainly doesn't look uncomfortable there on the floor just _baring all_ for anyone - for Adam - to see and isn't that just -- 

What if this _was_ Ronan offering that piece of himself to Adam, and what if he didn’t have a better way of doing it? What if this was Adam’s one shot and he didn’t even try to take it?

Adam takes a deep breath. It’s just. It’s _Ronan._ He lets the breath out and rejects the notion of any shame tied to just looking at something as interesting as a tattoo that runs the length of a spine belonging to _Ronan Lynch_. The same Ronan Lynch who’s just deliberately presenting the black lines painting his body to Adam like a goddamn installation at an art exhibit. And damn it, art is created to be appreciated.

Adam leans closer to take a look and feels like a monster.

Every inch of painted skin is a scar. It doesn't take Adam too long to do the math in his head. So then, in a loud, childish sort of way... this _was_ Ronan hiding himself. Whatever left them there evidently wanted them to be deeper, and Adam is having trouble swallowing around that fact. Whoever did this to Ronan clearly didn't intend for him to get back up. If Ronan wasn't right in front of Adam, breathing and alive, he would be scared he didn't. 

Long, wiry, exposed tendons ending in sawtoothed claws run along the edge of a thick tear in the skin just above where his shoulder blades meet his spine. Two of them; these run parallel along his vertebrae, blooming out into his rib cage with tree roots, beaks, human teeth, and then images less familiar to Adam. A pair of uneven eyes embedded in the palm of a boyish hand, a vine looping back in on itself instead of growing up from earth, a bird’s egg with a lamb sleeping peacefully within, a little crack in the shell whispering to Adam's heart that something someday might open its eyes and emerge from this mess. Maybe creatures less cruel than others. He looks again and sees a little girl holding a golden flower. A pattern that looks suspiciously like a constellation. A gentle-eyed hawk coming to land on an oil-covered branch, stuck there forever. Each image begins the next, dream-like in composition. He follows the lines like a dirt path through a memory. Not getting stuck on any one image, on any one piece of the puzzle because none of them tell the whole story. It's not a surprise that Adam wants to know the full story. 

He flips to the back of his worksheet and gets out a pencil. 


	3. Chapter 3

In some of Ronan’s dreams, they fuck for hours. In some of Ronan's dreams, they leave Henrietta and disappear off the face of the Earth for good. In some of Ronan's dreams, one of them dies young and the other drives the BMW off a cliff. In others, they never talk about it and nothing ever happens. Those are his favorite to think about when he thinks too hard about actually killing himself before he finishes high school.

It’s impossible to get it right because nothing has happened. It’s impossible to know what it would actually be like to hold him in his arms or to love him and lose him. But his dreams love to take the fragments he gives them and fill in the blanks for themselves. The way Adam’s throat moves when he throws his head back to drink from a bottle of water, like he’s never had a drink of anything in his life. The way his chest rises and falls when he’s out of breath. The way his skin stretches over his hip bones when he reaches for something above his head at the auto shop. The gentle slope of his mouth when he grins at something Ronan’s just said. His mind takes these pieces and sews them together in forms it easier to digest than the longing and the want he feels so violently during the day. Long, freckled limbs reaching or leaning, fingers tapping out a rhythm, the brush of a leg or a hand. It turns into gasping mouths underwater, sighing whispers heard from football fields apart, maybe from outer space, on Mars, floating through another fucking galaxy. It never makes any sense, but there’s always a pulsating, impossible-to-ignore undertone of distance and desire.

In others, he has to look away from tire tread and disfigured limbs, skulls crushed open like watermelons under white Mitsubishis, the chaotic laughter of Joseph Kavinsky still ringing in his ears, his face still hot from the fire that took him. From shaking, boyish hands holding a revolver to one of their heads, unable to move, held captive by some unseeable force, maybe love, maybe hate, maybe fate itself, and pulling the trigger.

Some nights they run from horrors indescribable and some nights they just run, pursued only by the anxieties you’d expect from the fragile psyches of displaced, orphaned teenage nightmares. Some nights fingers cling to bloody shirts and haul faces close, mouths and eyes intent, but never coming close enough for it to matter. Because even Ronan’s subconscious itself won’t allow him to take what he wants when it’s right in front of him.

Sometimes there’s screaming and everyone, everything, all around him erupts in noise. Gansey, Blue, Declan, Adam. It’s his fault his father died. It’s his fault Adam never feels safe at night. It’s his fault he’s failing out of high school. It’s his fault, his fault, all of it his fault. Sometimes there’s crying. Why couldn’t Matthew go back home? Why couldn’t Declan ever reach him when it was important? Why can't his mother hug him anymore?

Sometimes there's laughing, if a memory of Kavinsky finds its way in.

Some nights he walks out the door of Monmouth Manufacturing to find Adam’s bones, blood, and brain matter painting the curb beneath his feet and he feels a piece of him turn slowly and leave what’s left of him behind. Whatever it was that used to be who he was, a different Ronan Lynch, from a less complicated time. He closes his eyes. No matter how much of his old self he gathers throughout the night, he can’t seem to ever rescue it from his father’s memory. He steps on something and almost trips trying to move away from the gruesome scene. He leans down, takes it in his hand to move it out of the way. If he were Declan, feeling the sticky blood on his hand, maybe he’d have it in him to be angry. If he were Matthew, the smell alone might make him throw himself against the nearest object and wail. But all he feels in place of anything else is a crippling, lonely hollowness.

Ronan wakes to find himself on the floor of St. Agnes by Adam’s floor-bed-mattress setup. Adam’s quiet breaths aren’t enough to soothe him tonight. How did he even learn to sleep so untroubled when everything Ronan knows about him is so goddamn troubling? Why can’t they ever both, simultaneously, sleep at night? But Ronan knows the answers to his questions. He was there for some of Adam’s. He was there for all of his own.

Ronan wants to do nothing on nights like this one but drag Robert Parrish out of his trailer by his collar and beat him bloody. He wants to dig his fingers into the man's soft palette and throw him down the steps and into the light of day and expose him for what he is: a coward, an abuser, a liar. He wants it to be slow. He wants to watch the blood sink into the dirt where he’d witnessed a smaller body -- _Adam’s_ \-- hit the side of a railing with a sickening noise he could hear even from his car pulling out of the drive before collapsing into the ground. He wants to take back the life his own father lost and re-gift the death of a parent to the boy sleeping so peacefully on the mattress a few feet away from him. 

That’s when he feels it, a piece of metal curled gently in the palm of his hand. A tire iron still warm from use, wet with blood. 

Some time later, Adam is ripped to wakefulness by an impassioned _“Fuck!”_ coming from outside his window, immediately followed by the sound of laminated glass meeting some forceful and untimely end.

“Ronan...?” He turns over, but Ronan's nowhere in sight. 

Adam blinks gently and tries to get his eyes to cooperate. A car alarm is going off. There’s too much happening for him to focus and he falls on his face when he reaches the end of the mattress before standing to look around and assess the situation. Ronan is not where Adam left him on the floor, but there’s an imprint where his head pressed down on his shirt and there’s the worksheet crumpled next to Adam's pillow where he’d begun to sketch the tattoo before falling asleep. Blood rushes to his face at the memory. He looks for a place less conspicuous to keep it and settles on a drawer in his sad excuse for a dresser. 

The car alarm stops. A door slams shut. Footsteps stomp across the parking lot through glass towards his door. Adam is suddenly aware that he is frighteningly alone, light is still on, and that someone is outside of St. Agnes who can definitely see him moving through the blinds. He doesn’t give himself any time to entertain who it might be, just ducks down in his bed below his window and pulls the covers back over his head.

_Shit._

The footsteps slow by his door. Come to a stop. Adam pulls his pillow to his chest and tries to breathe normally. A knock comes once. Twice. He gives up on that and pulls it over his head to drown out the noise of his breaths. They knock several more times in quick succession.

_Shit shit shit._

“Parrish,” Ronan’s voice says. “Open the fucking door.”

Adam’s brain takes a moment to catch up.

"Parrish." Nothing. "Earth. To Adam Parrish."

Another knock. Then a sigh. Adam is slow to recover, but eventually he shakily removes himself from the safety of his bed, and then he’s moving faster than he intended to. Ready to not be alone again with loud noises happening in the dark, no matter who’s responsible for making them. He rips the door open and there, of course, is Ronan Lynch standing on the other side of Adam’s door, shirtless and covered in blood. Adam shouts in surprise and Ronan hurries across the threshold to slap a hand over Adam's mouth.

"Shh---Stop! Stop it! Nobody's hurt!" Ronan hisses, moving his attention to trying to quietly the door behind him. Adam is a few feet away, clutching the fabric of his shirt over his chest, his eyes still wide and fearful. Ronan drinks Adam in with a mixture of curiosity and concern. "Are you okay?" 

When Adam catches his breath, he considers saying several things. Most notably, _you scared the shit out of me, you fucking asshole_. He considers for a moment what Ronan’s response to that might be. 

“Do I even want to know what the hell happened to you?” He asks instead. Now that he's close to a source of light, Adam can see glass reflecting off of Ronan's scalp.

“Ronan?” Adam asks, his voice smaller than he’d like it to be. Adam doesn’t often think of this boy as a horror. But boy, would he be having some thoughts to that nature if this had been their first encounter. But Ronan just stares at him, silent, ashamed, embarrassed, and---something else. Something small and frightened. Adam crosses his arms, feeling exposed. “Well, alright,” he says gentler, taking in the tiny cuts starting to bleed on Ronan's exposed skin. “Let’s at least get you into the bathroom and get you cleaned up, then.”

Ronan nods and Adam leads him limply into the blunt force trauma of fluorescent lights. They spend the next hour in silence carefully picking glass out of eyelashes and skin and eyebrows and fingers and mostly the left side of his head with a very dull pair of tweezers. The shock of earlier has begun to wear off and is replaced by a surprising calm that only late nights spent with friends or the right combination of substances and stimuli can produce. Somewhere in there, Adam manages to get Ronan to tell him part of the story. He’d gotten into the BMW, failed to get the engine running, and punched the damn steering wheel. Adam’s trying not to laugh too hard through about a million and one questions. But after he explains to Ronan that airbags aren’t even supposed to deploy without impact from outside the cabin, Ronan quietly confesses his father pulled the BMW out of a dream and that whatever facts his father had about airbags are the ones that apply.

Adam hands him a towel, a t-shirt, and a pair of loose sweats he desperately hopes will fit and tells him to use the shower. His phone is buzzing from his bed when he shuts the door to the bathroom, his hands still just a bit shaky. Adam walks over to pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Adam, hey... listen, sorry to bother you this early.” 

Adam swallows. Gansey. Adam checks his watch. 3:23 A.M. Gansey sounds very nervous. Adam decides to take mercy on him. “It’s fine. Ronan’s here.” Adam says, finally letting himself move away from the blinds to pick Ronan's shirt up off the floor. “He had some--issue--with his car.”

“Oh, thank God.” Gansey’s relief is all consuming. “I hadn’t heard from him all yesterday and today and he wasn’t answering his texts... he wasn’t at school either, but that’s pretty much the norm him these days.” Adam doesn't say anything before Gansey adds, “I just had to check with a few people before calling Declan, you know?” Adam sighs, unsure of exactly what to ever tell Gansey when it came to his worries about Ronan.

“Yeah..." he says, feeling tired and useless and done with all of this. 

He lets Gansey talk for another minute, his voice a comfort, before they each hang up. Ronan is at his elbow before he puts the phone back in his pocket, a question in his eyes.

“Gansey?” he asks. Adam turns to look at him. The pants are only a little short.

“Gansey.” Adam confirms, bringing his eyes back up where they belong. “I’m guessing you can’t even see through your windshield?” Ronan sucks his lower lip into his mouth. Adam lets out another little laugh and goes to get his car keys. “Come on, I’ll drive you.”

Ronan’s mouth turns sour immediately at the thought. “Ugh.” He rolls his eyes so hard he probably sees God and Adam does his best not to let an evil grin crawl fully across his face. “Not the Hondayota.”

Once they arrive at Monmouth Manufacturing, Adam is invited inside to listen to Gansey wax poetical in regards to Ronan’s disappearing at night. And how it wasn’t Adam’s job to find him and bring him home. Like he was some kind of lost beloved pet. They both know Gansey means well. Just as he opens his mouth to say something very stiffly to that effect, it hits him. Gansey's concern. Ronan's complete lack of a response in the face of it. Ronan eyeing him carefully to gauge his response.

Gansey doesn't know where Ronan's been going at night.

Because if Gansey knew where he's been going at night, he'd know Ronan had spent most of those nights on Adam's floor. Adam raises an eyebrow at Ronan. But shuts his mouth. Ronan snorts.

“Time for a haircut, Parrish,” he flicks a strand of hair off Adam's ear. "Goodnight, Mother." Ronan coos at Gansey, before pulling his shirt over his head once again and discarding it amiably over half of Gansey's left shoulder. All Adam and Gansey can do is watch as Ronan disappears into his room and slams the door. A parking ticket floats peacefully to the floor. Gansey shoots Adam a narrow-eyed look. A look that is surely supposed to convey something along the lines of _can you fucking believe what just happened_ but mostly just conveys jealousy.

“You can’t do this for him,” Adam sighs. “I’ll bring him back as many times as I can, but he’s got to do this for himself.”

Gansey nods lightly and pulls the shirt off of his face, but doesn't meet Adam's eye. He offers Adam coffee. Breakfast. A hug. All manner of caring and brotherly things he can’t possibly hope Adam would accept. Then bids Adam a good night and safe travels. Because apparently Richard Campbell Gansey III thinks boys his age do that. Or something. 

Adam makes his way out to his car, already wondering why he'd lied to Gansey. Things never end well when he _lies to Gansey_. But as he's folding himself into the driver’s side of his shitty little car, the _Hondayota_ as Ronan so lovingly calls it, he sees Ronan sitting on his windowsill. Watching him. Adam waves neutrally from the seat instead of automatically pulling the door shut. Because there are eyes on him. Because what else is he supposed to do. And receives a tired, but tender grin for his efforts. He doesn’t hang around to see what that’s about to do to his complexion this early in the morning on so little sleep.

Honestly, Adam isn’t sure _why_ he’s keeping Ronan a secret from Gansey. But he is certain that Ronan is keeping _him_ a secret from Gansey.

And that somehow that carries a surprising amount of weight.


	4. Chapter 4

It is a Friday. 

Gansey’s 7 A.M. alarm comes and goes. Ronan groans and rolls over. If Gansey thinks he’s going to get him anywhere near Aglionby Academy before they all go “glamping” (as Maggot Brain derisively calls it), he’s got another thing coming. There’s sunlight beaming through his window and it’s too hot inside his room for him to fall asleep. It's been years since he's slept this horribly after a nightmare and Ronan didn't even bring back a monster this time. But here he is, running away again. He wishes he'd have just stayed with Adam. 

Gansey probably won't come in for the kill for a few more hours.

Ronan wills himself to close his eyes to at least prepare himself for that, but it's no use. He's gotten used to falling asleep with Adam breathing within ten feet of him and his subconscious is too stubborn to let him rest without it. But Gansey never sleeps and Ronan can't imagine that the other boy had closed his eyes until well after sunrise. He’s also been less of a puritan about school since Adam moved to St. Agnes, so Ronan _prays_ Gansey won't ride his ass for any longer than usual. Ronan thinks a little too hard about that one and lets out a monumental sigh. He might not be able to sleep away his problems, but he doesn’t have to be happy about it. Ronan pulls his covers up over his head and rolls over to avoid the light of God shining on him through his open window. He reaches out for his pillow, eyes still closed, and feels something very not-pillow-like. It giggles. Ronan pulls back his hand and throws off the duvet to expose the intruder, who at some point in the small hours of the morning had crept into Ronan’s room and under his covers to cause nothing but trouble and sleep deprivation. 

“Noah.” The intruder giggles again. 

_“Noah.”_ Noah begins to cackle maniacally, face alight with mischief. There’s something caught in his clutches. 

“Noah. My dude. My man. We have _talked about this._ ” Noah brings a shirt up to his nose and gives it a sniff. 

“ _Bro._ ” 

Noah leans in close and blows a raspberry all over Ronan’s cheek, eyes unblinking. “I just like the way gasoline smells.” Noah's voice is sweet, devoid of remorse. Ronan, resigned, wipes ectoplasm off his face and tries unsuccessfully to tug the shirt out of Noah’s grasp. 

“I could just give you something that smells like gasoline. You do know that, right?” 

Noah’s grin widens into something that screams of absolute chaos. 

“I don't want something of yours.” 

Ronan finally looks down at what he’s holding. Adam’s shirt. Noah’s uncanny gaze goes to Ronan’s ( _Adam’s)_ sweatpants, comes back up to Ronan’s face, and then he brings the shirt to his nose and gives it another long, drawn out _sniff._ Ronan’s ears go pink. Then he says, barely above a whisper, “If you have any warm, fuzzy feelings about your undead ballsack, you know _nothing_.” The cackling returns. If it were possible to yell and whisper at the same time, that would be the noise that explodes out of Noah. 

“OH, I KNOW _EVERYTHING.”_

“Alright, that’s it.” Ronan finds his pillow and traps Noah under it, giggling audible despite his best efforts. 

“Stop - GANSEY!” Noah cries, still holding onto Adam’s t-shirt for dear life. There’s no way Gansey could’ve heard him from underneath Ronan’s pillow, door shut, a room away. Ronan tries to keep the humor out of his voice. 

“It’s no use, you little fucker! I gave you a chance!” Noah’s cries have become caricatures of themselves. It’s fucking freaky, but Noah’s probably intimately acquainted with cries for mercy and that’s got to do something to you, so Ronan gives him a pass. 

“NOOO GANSEY NOOOOO IT WAS ONLY A _SHIRT!"_ Noah's screams come out like three very long words knitted together. With love. 

“Say goodbye to your manhood, dude. Blue can hold a testicle seance for you later.” 

Noah was never in any danger. Noah was always capable of wriggling free. But he chooses the exact moment Gansey bursts in without knocking to launch his attack. He uses his feet to kick Ronan off of him and almost off the bed, giving Noah just enough time to pin him down and force his head through the top of the shirt. This is what Gansey sees: Ronan’s face red with laughter and frustration, his shirt half over his face, Noah pinning him to the bed as he yells, “THEY’RE MY BALLS AND YOU CAN’T HAVE THEM!” Gansey slams the door shut to announce his presence.

Ronan freezes and looks over at him. Noah lets out a noise of sheer triumph which begins to morph into something more and more strange, adding a second tone, and then a third. His face loses its expression, eyes rolling back, body going limp and hanging mid-air as if secured tightly by a tether around his chest. All the objects in Ronan’s room begin to float. Sound leaves Monmouth Manufacturing with a noise like the opposite of _making._ The only thing left is Ronan’s breath.

Gansey’s face is attempting to do some very complex trigonometry. There is a phone in his hand. There’s a name on it. Noah blinks, vacant eyes drinking in the light coming off the cell phone screen. A hiss like air rushing out of a can leaves Noah’s body and he lifts his head, eyes coming back into focus as if called on by another voice present. “Uh, Noah…” Ronan tries, eyes darting from one object to another as everything, all the shit floating around his room and hands coming up slowly to cover his face. 

“I. Wait - _don’t,_ ” Noah whispers, stuttering into lucidity. Noah reaches out a hand to take something neither of them can see. Everything except Gansey, Ronan, and the bed beneath him flies to where Noah’s body had been a moment before, crashes together, and then lands in a crumpled heap on Ronan’s chest.

“ _Why!_ ” Ronan shouts, jumping out of the bed and trailing glass and alcohol behind him from a jar of cheap gas station vodka he keeps (kept) on his desk. He stomps to the bathroom. Gansey doesn’t hear the bathroom door close before the shower turns on. He wills the breath to return to his lungs. Noah is gone. Blue Sargent’s tiny voice breaks the silence from the other end of the line. 

_“Hello? Is anybody going to fill me in on what the_ fuck _is happening over there?”_

Adam shows up to meet his friends with a thermos full of coffee, a duffel bag filled with two days’ worth of clothes, and a hesitant concern hanging over him. 

Neither Ronan nor Gansey had shown up to any of their shared classes that day. A year or so ago that wouldn't have been a cause for concern. But today was the day they were planning on driving out to Cabeswater. This was the weekend they were going to fill with searching for answers. Gansey had been complaining about strange EMF readings for over a month. There are places Adam can't seem to reach anymore through scrying. 

But the final nail in the coffin was Noah. And it was this that had forced Adam to send a text asking if everyone was alright. A message that had been left unanswered.

Adam considers knocking out of respect for the potentially deceased instead of just shouldering in as usual when Gansey opens the door looking like he’s already lost a war. Or three. Adam can hear Blue and Ronan’s voices from inside as he sizes him up, equally loud and equally stubborn. He takes in Gansey’s general dishevelment and puts a hand on his hip, trying not to look too concerned or disappointed. 

“Nobody came to class?” Adam's voice is wary. 

Gansey’s eyelid twitches. He sucks in a breath of air, then hisses it out. 

“Yeah, Noah destroyed Ronan’s room and disappeared." Adam's face falls and Gansey averts his eyes. It's important to handle whatever's going on with subtlety. Noah becoming more unstable could be a symptom of something potentially more serious. 

“Should we even still go?” 

Gansey crosses his arms and sighs again, stubborn.

“No, no, we're still---of course we're still going," Gansey tells him, leaning in in before continuing. Adam leans in as well, if for no other reason than to catch Gansey's whispered words. “I think we would know if---if it had gotten to that point. We still have you. I think you'd know... wouldn't you?"

Gansey's worried. He's worried and looking to Adam for comfort. Adam's not sure how to give it to him.

"I mean," Adam's eyes flicker to Blue and Ronan, catching the tail end of a look being thrown his way by the latter. "Probably?"

Gansey runs a hand over his face and gives up.

"Would you like to come inside?” 

Adam crosses the threshold. He knows the end of a conversation when he hears one. Gansey takes his duffel bag and his thermos and puts it with the rest of the supplies already packed. Adam wants to ask if he’s okay, why nobody responded to his message. It’s not hard to tell that something’s eating at Gansey. He’s just never been great at being on the receiving end of his friends’ anxiety. But it looks like Gansey can tell he’s struggling with something and claps a hand on his back, offering Adam that easy affection that’s so alien to him.

“I’m glad you’re here.” 

Adam smiles awkwardly, but Gansey doesn’t seem to mind, granting him a conspiratorial wink. Adam feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. One grin and a wink and it’s impossible not to feel Ronan’s eyes on them. Ronan Lynch's looks are notoriously poisonous. Normally felt in the same way one might feel the eyes of a vulture in the desert: hungry, waiting. Adam kids himself when he forces himself to think: maybe they're on Gansey.

Well, maybe they are on Gansey. Maybe they're just on the exchange itself. Who can tell with Ronan Lynch? Certainly not Adam Parrish.

Ronan Lynch, whose clothes just seem to keep ending up on the floor of his apartment, clothes that Adam has no idea how to hand back to him---some of them covered in unidentified blood Adam has no idea if he should wash out. Ronan Lynch, whose car is still outside his window looking like a crowbar fucked it six ways to Sunday. Ronan Lynch, who’s currently getting his whole ass handed to him by one Blue Sargent who's just over half his height. Adam, transfixed and lost in thought, doesn’t realize he’s tripped and fallen into his thoughts until Gansey's eyeing him for a response. “Sorry,” Adam states mechanically. “What was that?” 

“I just wondered if you've eaten yet, if we should pack more. Would you like some coffee for the road?” Gansey repeats the offer good-naturedly. Adam stares, trying to understand why Gansey’s always asking him about coffee, of all things, when everybody just grabs whatever they want out of the fridge at Monmouth anyway. Gansey sighs and looks away again, then says what he actually wants to say. "I'm sorry about Ronan last night."

Adam’s eyes snap back into focus. 

“Why...?" He clears his throat. "It's not your fault his car broke down."

Adam normally lies smoothly, carefully, with practiced ease. But something about the events of the other night have him shaken. Thankfully, Gansey doesn't hear his attempts to deflect. His eyes are locked on an incoming call. He ignores it and then looks up at Ronan, expression slipping on a mask of reason and calm. 

"I'm sorry, Adam, excuse me." 

Adam watches uneasily as Gansey's eyes turn murderous when he thinks Adam can't see. Watches him storm into Blue and Ronan's argument and roughly drag Ronan away by the arm to talk in private. Blue looks on, shocked by the interaction, shuffling over to him. A mask can only hide so much, it seems. 

"The police called," she whispers. He stares at Blue, uncomprehending. 

“...what?” 

"Yeah, right after I got here. Something about---" Blue falls silent and crosses her arms over her chest, nervous. "I don't know. Gansey wouldn't tell me." 

Adam remembers Ronan disappearing sometime after he fell asleep the night prior. Remembers Ronan reappearing in his doorway covered in blood. He swallows. 

"Tell me this is not what I think it is." Gansey's voice is pleasant, but Ronan can tell he's furious. 

"Uhh, I dunno," Ronan sniffs, disinterested, hands slipping into pockets. "The fuck do you think it is?" 

Gansey inhales. Then he exhales. 

"I think," his phone rings again as he's speaking, but he takes the back off with trembling hands and removes the battery before continuing. Ronan raises an eyebrow. "I think you paid Adam's folks a visit last night with distasteful intentions." Ronan laughs at Gansey's wording. Gansey's eyes narrow. "Ronan, this is serious. They called the authorities."

"So?" Ronan asks casually, but his voice lowers. 

"There are things I can't protect you from. Do you want to go to jail?" Gansey's voice drops to a vicious whisper, having not realized it had risen in volume. "I mean it. Do you really want to do that to us? Were you thinking of Adam at all?" 

Ronan's eyes fall shut. He knows Gansey's right. 

"No." 

"No. That's what I thought," Gansey nods, stepping closer. His eyes are clear, wide, fearful. "Don't you ever, under any circumstance, for any reason on this Earth, do that to me." 

Ronan tries to brush past Gansey, but Gansey blocks his path. 

"How do you imagine it felt, to get that call from Declan?" Ronan won't look at him, but Gansey's not even close to being finished. "What about Aglionby? To assure them that it couldn't have been you? That you were sleeping peacefully in your room at Monmouth when that would have occurred?" 

Someone lightly raps their knuckles on the door. Gansey holds Ronan's eye for another second. Ronan looks away and nods. Gansey mirrors it. An understanding. When Gansey can breathe again, he opens the door. 

"Adam..."

The tension returns in Gansey's voice and Ronan wants to sink into the floorboards. 

Adam looks at Ronan. Ronan looks at Adam. 

"I don't know what's going on in here and I don't care to know," he lies smoothly. "But we should probably get going."


	5. Chapter 5

Noah doesn’t reappear. Gansey is doing his best to drive safely along winding streets in the fading light while Adam is neglecting his duty as navigator, asleep in the passenger seat next to Gansey. Gansey envies him for it. He only regrets volunteering to drive a little. Although Adam’s car is, technically, perfectly serviceable and he’s pretty sure the BMW runs on dream fuel, it was out of the question not to take the Pig. 

However, Gansey has to admit to himself that it’s been a pretty exhausting start to the trip. 

He had wanted to get more batteries for his lantern and his voice recorder, so they made a stop. Then somewhere around hour two Ronan had started complaining about how he was thirsty and he realized they’d forgotten to bring water, so they made a second stop. Then Adam found out the Pig didn’t have a spare tire, a battery charger, or even jumper cables, so they made another stop. Then, to top it off, Gansey had asked Adam where the next exit was and, when the other boy neglected to respond, looked down to find him fast asleep. Gansey doesn’t hold it against him; Adam is a sleepless creature most of the time and he’d prefer to let him rest when he can. So in the end, it’s down to Gansey to turn the damn car around and find his way around the dark state routes. Gansey turns the music up to drown out Ronan’s sarcasm and Blue’s indignation in the back, giving in to his fate as designated adult. 

Another forty-five minutes pass and Gansey thinks they might just make it without another stop when Blue looks down at her phone and realizes it’s been on silent. 

“Gansey?” she calls from behind him, with some trepidation. He looks back in the rearview mirror. She looks as though an apology of some kind is about to come out when every phone that’s not Blue’s receives an incoming call. 

Ronan smirks viciously when he sees his brother’s number on his phone screen before rejecting the call. Declan calls again. And again. And continues calling, leaving voicemail after voicemail that Ronan unceremoniously deletes. Blue keeps her eyes down at her hands in her lap. Adam stirs the second time his phone rings in his pocket. He looks confused and not a little annoyed, but answers. 

“Parrish,” he manages to slur out. 

_“Hello?”_ comes the response. _“Is Blue Sargent with you?”_ Adam pinches the bridge of his nose. There’s always someone calling him in the middle of the night these days, Gansey thinks with a bit of chagrin. No wonder he looks so tired. 

“Yeah,” Adam says, completely devoid of ceremony. “We’ve got her in the back. Want me to hand you over?” Adam doesn’t see Blue shaking her head furiously beside Ronan, but Gansey does. He holds one hand out to take the phone from Adam and Adam hands it over, curling back into his previous mold against the door. Blue’s expression turns from fearful to thankful and Gansey gives her a smile as he puts the phone to his ear. 

“Good evening, with whom am I speaking?” Gansey asks, and years of watching his father handle things politely take over.

Whatever Ronan’s grinning at, it can’t be good. But it must be related to the situation at hand, because Blue shoves him roughly and levels him with a look that would leave Gansey or Adam a puddle on the floor, but which has no effect whatsoever on Ronan. His grin grows and he holds out his hand in defense. 

_“Yeah, hi.”_ Gansey recognizes the voice. _“It’s Calla. Where’s our little troublemaker?”_ Gansey is speechless. He briefly considers lying or omitting facts. But in the end, he gives Blue a warning look in the rearview and tells the truth.

“You’re such a goddamn riot,” Ronan says in a stage whisper.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Blue hisses, punctuating each word with a slap to Ronan’s shoulder. 

“...she’s about three hours into a weekend camping trip.” 

Not technically a lie, even if it is slightly more important. Gansey wishes he weren’t driving so he could catch a glimpse of Blue’s face. But he’s not apologizing and he’s not offering to take her back, so that’s got to be worth something. 

_“Okay... and who’s on this ‘camping trip,’ may I ask?”_ Gansey opens his mouth to tell her, but she starts speaking again before he gets the chance. _“Wait, wait, wait. Are you driving and talking on the phone at the same time?”_

“...yes?” Gansey supplies generously.

 _“Oh, for fuck’s sake, pull over at a gas station or something and call me back.”_ Gansey hears the click when Calla hangs up on her end and pulls the phone away from his ear, shocked. 

“Well, that wasn’t very nice.” Gansey’s voice betrays just a hint of mirth. Blue doesn’t respond. Gansey finally takes a look in the rearview before turning off at the next exit. She looks completely unapologetic. And completely terrified. 

“Jane,” Gansey starts, ignoring Ronan’s snicker in response behind him. 

“...what.” Blue answers dully. 

“Jane,” Gansey starts over. “Jane---your mother has _no idea_ where you are, does she?” 

“She knows _exactly_ where I am,” Blue's holding on to her seatbelt like it's her only line of defense at the top of a roller coaster. “Thank you very much.” 

Gansey hopes this information is true. He also hopes nobody thinks he intends to turn around now---when they’re closer to Cabeswater than 300 Fox Way by several hours. 

“I don’t care what they tell you. Don’t you dare turn this fucking car around,” Blue whispers, ferocious. “No matter how mad they are.” Blue grits her teeth and Ronan cackles, delighted. 

Adam groans at the noise and shifts in his sleep, trying to find a better position against the unforgiving groove below the window. Behind him, Ronan offers Blue a high-five and she elbows him in the ribs instead. Ronan chokes on his laughter and Blue gets him again, trying to keep a smile off her face. 

Gansey thinks he might be in love. 

“Wake up, sleeping beauty!” Ronan yells suddenly, gripping the sides of Adam’s seat in front of him and shaking it for all he’s worth. “Blue Sargent’s a fuckin’ runaway!” 

Adam very, very slowly rises from his position against the window, his eyes still closed. He inhales, turns his head to peer through the break in the seats. A half-conscious smile spreads across one side of his face and he reaches back to condescendingly pat Ronan on the cheek. Then, without warning, Adam pulls the release by the door and the seat falls back onto Ronan’s legs and Ronan _squeaks._ Blue giggles evilly when Adam sighs contentedly, stretching his arms out above the headrest and dropping his hands in Ronan’s lap. The laughter turns hysterical when Ronan’s face almost turns purple and he turns his face to look out the window.

Ronan looks like he might actually be in shock. Gansey makes the mistake of making eye contact with Blue and then he’s laughing, too. 

“Fuck you guys...” Ronan says, while Adam’s fingers cling to his shirt. Then, defeated, “...shut the _fuck_ up, maggot.”

Somehow, they’ve all received the same message: 

_Everything is going to be fine._

Even as Adam starts shivering in his sleep and Gansey pulls off his jacket and drags it over him and Ronan’s eyes do something hard and ugly at the sight. Even as Ronan tries to lift Adam’s wrists off his lap and Adam’s fingers just cling to him in sleep---and Blue’s side-eye is deadly and all-knowing. Even as Gansey pulls off the road into an abandoned-looking truck stop that definitely, without the shadow of a doubt, looks like a place four high schoolers might get abducted or shot. Even as the three of them stare out at the darkness from the relative safety of the lone street lamp above them and Gansey assigns Ronan lookout in case somebody shows up while Gansey’s on the phone with Calla.

Even as Gansey dials the number for 300 Fox Way and nobody says anything about how he obviously knows it by heart. 

Adam shivers so violently he jostles himself awake. 

His first thought, looking out the window of the BMW, is that at some point while he was sleeping they’d switched cars because putting Blue and Ronan together in the back of the Pig was the worst decision Gansey had ever made in his life. His second thought, taking in the familiar landscape before him, is that this has to be some sick kind of joke. Blinking, disoriented, Adam turns to confront Ronan about this, but the smell finally hits him and all the breath rushes out of his lungs. 

Ronan Lynch sits beside him in the driver’s seat, a startling spectre with dead eyes. Shirtless, dipped in blood just as he had been when he appeared in Adam’s doorway. The black, inky tattoo coils up Ronan’s back, shoulders, neck like something living, almost parasitic. Dead eyes stare straight ahead through the glass of the windshield. One hand gripping the steering wheel like a lifeline, the other white-knuckled around a long piece of metal resting otherwise inoffensively across Ronan’s thighs. 

“Ronan...” Ronan continues to stare out the windshield. “Stop, you’re scaring me.” 

Nothing. Adam’s voice doesn’t reach Ronan’s ears.

Adam tries to put a hand on his shoulder to shake him out of whatever trance he’s entered, but the hand falls through Ronan’s shoulder like a rock dropped into a pool of water. 

A light flickers on within the double-wide fifty feet from the BMW. A curtain opens. Robert Parrish’s ugly sneer peeks out at them and Adam’s heart picks up. Time has passed, sure, but not enough for him to pretend he’s not afraid. Adam swallows. 

But Ronan is fearless in the presence of this man. Always has been. And Adam is still figuring out how he’s supposed to feel about that. Ronan’s upper lip curls up into a snarl, eyes locked on the face in the window. Pity Adam’s father can’t see it through the headlights. But that is quickly remedied when Ronan pulls the latch next to him and kicks with his leg, throwing the door open. He hurls himself out the exit and stumbles like he’s been drinking. Maybe he has. Adam wouldn’t know. 

The rumbling engine noise mixes with the chirping of crickets. The stench of drying blood is taken over by dirt and wet grass. And now that he’s on his feet in the beam of the headlights, a piece of metal hanging loosely in his grip, Ronan Lynch has been replaced by a monster framed by yellow light. 

The light goes off inside the double-wide and the curtain closes. Adam doesn’t want to find out what happens if they stay here for too much longer. 

_This is why,_ Adam thinks hysterically, _this has to be why the cops called._

But it’s just a dream. It has to be. Adam slides his fingers through the latch on the passenger side door and finds it solid in his hand. He pulls. The car door opens and allows him to step out. The grass beneath his feet carries him to Ronan’s stiff shadow. He knows if he were watching from the car, another eerie shadow would be joining Ronan’s. Hands casually stuffed inside pockets, feet kicking up dust, attempting to remind the first one that bodies move, breathe, and speak. 

“What now?” 

Adam knows Ronan can’t hear him, but not speaking feels worse. Ronan’s chin dips and his eyes close like he’s thinking. He lets out the first audible breath Adam’s heard since he woke up. His eyes flicker back up to the double-wide and he clears his throat and spits. Ronan’s body betrays him as a tear forms in one eye, then the other, shameless. Adam wants to reach over with a sleeve and wipe it away, blood be damned. But he can’t, so he reaches for the tire iron instead. It’s solid. He pulls and Ronan’s grip loosens, letting the full weight fall into Adam’s fingers. The metal is warm where Ronan held it, cool where he hadn’t. Adam can feel some of the blood rubbing off on his fingers, sticky and still wet from Ronan’s sweaty palm. 

Maybe there’s something symbolic in that, blood passing from one hand to the next, guided by the weight of a weapon. 

Before he can convince himself not to, Adam reaches for one of the leather bands on Ronan’s wrist. It’s wet and rough from chewing, but tangible. He curls a finger around the band and tugs. 

Ronan’s wrist goes with it and Ronan looks down at his arm, his dead eyes blinking back to life in fear and wonder. Then he looks up and he’s looking right through Adam with that fear and that wonder. Adam turns away from it, from Ronan. It’s too much. 

Then he speaks. 

“I was wondering when you might show up again.” 

Adam doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t know what he’ll see. 

“Come back,” Adam whispers to the grass, tugging again on the thread. “We need to go back.” 

The phone at 300 Fox Way rings four times and then goes to voicemail. Gansey tries once more. Voicemail again. He sighs through the voicemail message and starts speaking once he hears the tone. 

“Hi, Calla, or Maura, or whoever receives this message. It’s Gansey, Ronan, and Adam. We promise to keep Blue safe while she’s with us this weekend. But I wanted to send you guys a heads up that we won’t have signal once we get to the campsite and that it would be unwise to turn around and come back at this hour. Take care and feel free to leave me messages while we’re out of range. I’ll be sure to respond to them as soon as I can.” Gansey thinks for a moment. Then adds, “Don’t give her too much hell. She’s the only brain cell in the car right now. Have a good night.” Gansey ends the call. He sighs and leans back in his seat, exhausted. 

“Well,” Ronan starts. “At least nothing happened while I was on lookout.” Blue makes a strangled little noise, but Gansey’s too tired to look back at her to see why. He puffs out a small laugh and lets his head fall to the left. He comes face to face with Noah, face pressed into the glass and mouth open and grinning madly from ear to ear. 

Richard Campbell Gansey III lets out a womanly shriek to end all womanly shrieks. 

Blue is snorting from the effort to keep from laughing, the traitor, and Ronan is practically crying. Gansey wants to kill them. He’s pretty sure he just had a minor heart attack. Blue’s obviously trying to appear concerned, but she’s still laughing, damn her, so now Gansey is laughing, too. She leans forward to run a soothing hand up and down Gansey’s arm. 

“Surprise, surprise!” Noah gaily flings open the door and climbs into the backseat, forcing Blue closer to Ronan. “What’d I miss?” 

“Noah,” Gansey says, still catching his breath. “How long have you been here?” 

“Most of the time you were on the phone.” Noah giggles madly. “Didja miss me?” Gansey starts to get a bit misty-eyed looking at him from the front seat, but if anyone notices, they mercifully don’t point it out. 

“Yeah, Noah,” he laughs. “I did, actually, I thought you were going to miss the whole trip.” 

Noah’s smile gets bigger. “Well, I didn’t! Oh...” Noah’s face falls when Adam whimpers. The car falls silent. “...Adam?” 

Adam’s eyes snap open and he gasps, driving his body up so quickly he almost falls out of the car seat and hits the dashboard. The seat catapults up after him and Adam startles, hiding his face in the dashboard. Gansey creeps over and his palm settles cautiously between Adam’s shoulder blades. He sends a look of concern to the backseat. After a few disturbing seconds, Adam sucks in a breath and coughs wetly. 

“Parrish,” Ronan pushes, anxious. Ronan leans into the front seat, practically climbing over the break in the seats. 

Gansey stops him with a hand to his chest. “Give him a second.” 

From the backseat, Blue and Noah can see Adam’s chest struggle to expand when he tries to breathe and coughs again --- violently. Noah finds Blue’s hand and squeezes. Gansey dips his head, trying to see Adam’s face, asks if he’s okay. But Adam pushes him frantically away and fumbles with the car door, gasping for breath. It opens and water pours out of his throat onto the asphalt. 

Adam scrambles to get out of the car, takes two feet, and then goes limp and hits the ground. 

Ronan is out of the car in the blink of an eye, the rest of them hot on his heels.

“Someone--- _Jesus---_ lift his head off the ground!” Gansey doesn’t even realize he’s shouting. 

Ronan rolls Adam over and freezes for half a second, the adrenaline catching up to him. But then Gansey’s there with him, telling him what to do. Ronan lifts Adam’s torso while Blue supports his head and Gansey secures his legs. 

It’s only when they get him back to the car that Ronan notices blood on Adam’s hands. He blinks and looks in another direction, flashes of Robert Parrish’s rage overriding the present moment. Gansey says something, snaps to get his attention. Ronan shakes his head. His ears are ringing. 

“Parrish.” Ronan says once they’ve got him laying across the backseat. He sounds like a broken record. The world is too slow. Ronan crouches by the open car door and takes Adam’s upside-down face in his hands and barely refrains from shaking him. _“Wake up, Parrish.”_

Adam doesn’t respond. 

Blue and Noah hover on the other side of the car as Gansey pushes past them and crawls carefully over Adam. He removes his glasses and places his head gently on Adam’s chest and waits. The only sound is their breathing. Ronan shuts his brain off at the picture he sees. Now is _not the time._

After ten seconds, Gansey lets out a breath and lifts his head to stare at Ronan. 

“Well, he’s breathing.” 

Ronan drops his forehead to the car seat by Adam’s jaw and _prays._

Sometime later, an unfathomable amount of time, someone puts a hand on Ronan’s shoulder and Adam coughs. Ronan’s head rips away from the car seat and he sees stars. 

“What the hell…” Adam croaks, then coughs again, eyes squinting. “Gansey?” 

“Adam!” he says, relieved, awkward, shifting out of Adam’s lap. Adam tries to lift his head and winces. 

“God, my head… what did you do to me?” Adam asks, Gansey shuffling out of the way as he struggles to sit up.

Ronan hovers behind Adam, coming down from the shock, while Gansey clears his throat. His hands are shaking as he puts on his glasses. 

“You scared the shit out of us.” 

“Oh, I did…?” Adam sniffs, looking around him with confusion. “Sorry, I…” Adam scratches his head, trailing off, waiting for someone to say something. 

Some of the laughter returns, Noah sneakily wiping tears from Blue’s face. Ronan doesn’t stop himself from running a hand through Adam’s hair, whispering something threatening and obscene in Latin that Adam only bothers to quirk an eyebrow at in response. 

“So, uh,” Gansey starts. “You’re not gonna want to hear this, but I think a hospital would be a good idea.” 

Adam scoffs. 

“Adam…” Blue sighs, almost out of ear shot. 

“No, I’m serious.” Gansey’s tone leaves no room for argument. “We thought we lost you there for a second.” 

Adam brings his knees in and hugs them to his chest. “Gansey, all they would tell you is that I’m conscious. I’m stable.” 

Gansey shakes his head in disbelief. “No, whatever they say will be worth hearing.” 

“Gansey…” Adam pleads. “Please. I’ve dealt with enough doctors in my life to know.” 

Gansey's jaw stiffens. He wants to find out which doctors Adam's been seeing and ruin their careers. 

“Gansey, hey…” Adam reaches out to touch his shoulder, but Gansey intercepts it and holds it with both hands. 

Gansey takes a deep breath and says, “I don’t want to lose you.” 

“You _won’t._ ”

Gansey stares at him. 

“You don’t know that.” Adam sighs and looks away. 

Adam wins in the end. Ronan helps him back into the passenger seat and crams himself into the back with Noah and Blue. Noah watches Adam like a hawk. Silent, uncanny, and unreadable, fingers pressing lightly to the discoloration underneath his eyelid. Something moves just under the skin, reminiscent of a ripple in a body of water, and then returns to normal.


	6. Chapter 6

Ronan’s running. He’s not sure from what. It keeps changing on him. His dreams used to be so cohesive, in their childlike fairytale way, before his father died. He hadn’t been old or wise or scared enough to ask his father any questions while he’d still had time. There was nothing to worry about. His father was always and would always be there. But Niall Lynch was not in the business of blessing his beloved creations with independence. All he’d ever taught Ronan was how to keep a secret: 

Matthew, his gift, their family, the _Barns_. The innumerable horrors that had occurred therein. 

Other parents could offer some level of comfort when their children had nightmares. 

_It’s not real. It’s just a dream. There’s nothing to worry about. You’re safe now._

But Ronan, even as a child, was a hard creature to lie to. He knew he took a gamble every time he closed his eyes. He could wake with a song cupped in his gentle hands or a night horror crouching over his paralyzed body. And on nights like this, he walks to the Barns and sees a dark figure hovering over his father’s remains. 

Ronan runs to the porch, but the door doesn’t open. He ducks around the back, but there’s no garage. The window is too high up for him to get a handhold and there’s no part of the house that’s easier to climb, so he runs. He hides in the bushes, holding a hand over his nose and mouth to keep from breathing as it passes by, snuffling at the edges of the tall grass. When it’s out of sight, Ronan sneaks under the fence to the pasture and crawls through the grass. It’s just high enough to hide his body from the intruder. Ronan doesn’t know what’s looking for him. He never looks. Looking would only make it worse. 

That’s the problem with not having a face attached to death. Ronan’s mind builds its _own._

By the time he makes it to a barn, it’s raining and he’s soaked through. Ronan sits against the wall, hidden behind a bale of hay, and tries to breathe warm air into his shivering hands, but everything about him is so cold it doesn’t make much of a difference. Ronan takes himself through his options. 

  1. Find it and kill it. 
  2. Stay in the barn forever.
  3. Run as fast and as far as he can. 
  4. Call Declan. 



Ronan sighs. He revises the list. 

  1. Kill himself. 
  2. Let the monster kill him. 
  3. Call Declan. 



He hears footsteps searching for him nearby. It hisses his name. Ronan tries his best not to recognize its distorted voice. His teeth chatter as he tries, tries, tries to dream a distraction. Anything to keep it from finding him. Ronan can almost feel its warm breath on his shoulder when a dog barks once, twice, then cries and falls silent. 

_I’m sorry,_ he thinks. 

Ronan takes his phone out of his pocket and calls Declan. 

When Declan arrives, he is not happy to see Ronan. Dream-Declan is never happy to see Ronan. But tonight Declan is even unhappier, considering Ronan is dripping all over his fancy car. As far as Ronan is concerned, it’s an improvement. It smells like he fucked some rich white girl in it. Ronan tells him so. Declan takes his head and shoves it violently against the window. Ronan, slow to recover, thinks he might be seeing stars. His forehead aches along the line of impact and his skin stings, but he fights to keep from lifting a hand to his face to show that it hurts. Ronan realizes he might be crying after all, so what does it matter? It’s dark out and there’s no light on in Declan’s car so he doesn’t try to hide. He tells Declan something’s chasing him. Declan snorts, his disbelief a living thing breathing the air with them. Ronan tells Declan he thinks he killed their father. 

“Ronan, this has to stop,” He says through gritted teeth. “You have to stop making shit up. Some of us have work to do, lives to live.” Ronan tries to think of something else to say, something to make Declan believe him, and fails. Declan slaps a piece of paper down over the glove compartment. It has Gansey’s writing on it. An invitation of some sort. Declan gestures roughly at it to indicate he should read it. Ronan gingerly picks it up. 

“Gansey’s getting engaged?” Ronan asks blandly. 

_What fresh hell is this?_

He snorts. Gansey’s words in his head are always good for lightening the mood. It’s an invitation to the Lynch family, no names specified. 

“Why don’t you make yourself useful,” Declan says slowly, making sure each syllable hits Ronan where it needs to. “And deliver a gift on behalf of our family?” Ronan nods, afraid to speak. Declan starts the car and pulls out of the driveway. Ronan watches the Barns disappear out his window and tries not to hear Declan’s next words. “And for God’s sake, try not to be such a faggot about it this time.” 

Declan drops Ronan off outside of Gansey’s fancy new apartment. It has all the imagined impoverished urban charm of being located in the midst of the downtown arts district, the building itself looking very much like Monmouth Manufacturing, another abandoned warehouse. Very Gansey. But Ronan’s sure that if Gansey’s parents have anything to do with it, the inside has managed to adopt an inherently old money underbelly. He somehow manages to find his way inside, holding a bottle of champagne from Declan with a name on it he isn’t going to attempt to pronounce. Gansey II opens the door and ushers him in, asking about school and not seeming to care that Ronan doesn’t bother to answer. He’s here for Gansey and this man before him isn’t real. 

Gansey’s mother and sister fret at his drenched clothes once he’s in the kitchen. He’s delivered the champagne to a hideously large kitchen island full of gifts well-lit by an overhanging chandelier. It’s probably made of blown glass and foreign children’s tears. Helen is dressed to kill and her mother is dressed her age and Gansey II looks like a cardboard cutout of a proud middle-aged man from a movie Ronan saw in his youth. Possibly Swiss Family Robinson. He tries to tell them he’d like to see Gansey, but they hustle him into a room off to the side and Gansey II hands him a pile of clothes that look like they belong in the 20’s, complete with hideous clip-on suspenders. Ronan doesn’t try to hide his displeasure, but is unable to politely decline Mr. Swiss Family Robinson’s outdated change of outfit when the man is twice his size and would most definitely pursue him if he ran. This is still Ronan’s subconscious. In the end, Ronan sighs and changes into the damn suspenders. 

Ronan spends a truly harrowing amount of time looking for Gansey and feeling sickly and out of place. He’s even tried asking the other partygoers, but no one seems to have seen him. Gansey, or, rather, Dick, as everyone seems intent on calling him, is apparently planning to show up at a specific time. To make it a surprise. Or something. Ronan’s not going to try to understand the goings-on of bored, depressing, beautifully dressed rich people. Some woman dressed in a disturbing shade of orange is relaying this information to him for the fifth time when Ronan turns his head and sees a ghost. 

Adam Parrish glides in unannounced and beautiful in a pair of shoes that appear to have never seen another pair of feet and fitted trousers that probably cost him a year’s paycheck. His chin is dipped and his brows furrowed in concentration as he tries to secure an old-looking pair of ivory cufflinks to the sleeves of a billowing white shirt that hugs his body in all the right areas and forces the air out of Ronan’s lungs. Ronan abandons the woman in orange, his body moving of its own accord towards Adam. Lights flicker and chatter fades and Ronan appears before Adam out of nowhere with nothing to say. Ronan holds out a hand, offering to help with the cufflinks and Adam’s face snaps to his, jaw falling open and eyes going wide. 

“Ronan,” Adam whispers. It’s all Ronan’s ever wanted to hear. Awe, disbelief, wonder. The whole package. He’s looking at Ronan like he hasn’t seen him in years. For all Ronan knows, maybe he hasn’t. 

“Need a hand?” Ronan asks, hand still outstretched. Adam makes a small, delighted noise and drops the cufflinks into Ronan’s waiting hand, eyes crinkling at the corners. Ronan gently pinches the cuffs of the first sleeve together and inserts the cufflink through both of the buttonholes, feeling Adam’s eyes on him. “Any idea who Gansey’s getting hitched with?” Ronan asks, moving on to the second sleeve. He takes his time. He takes what he can get. But when Ronan looks back at Adam, there’s a new kind of shock on his face.

“Gansey’s… getting engaged---tonight?” Adam’s eyes search his own for confirmation. 

“That’s what it said in the invitation.” Ronan tells him, still holding Adam’s sleeve. He doesn’t like what he sees in Adam’s face. “Did I say something?” Adam pulls his hand back, composes himself. 

“Don’t worry about it. Thanks for, you know, the help,” Adam says, almost trembling. “Can I get you a drink or anything for the trouble?” Ronan’s confusion turns to worry and then turns to panic. Over what? He’s not sure. He really, really doesn’t like the look on Adam’s face. 

“What, is that like---” Ronan swallows past a lump in his throat, his words laughter that tries for lighthearted but comes out too bitter. He tries again. “Is that your jurisdiction these days?” They can both tell he’s not really asking. 

Adam looks like he’s either lost a fair amount of blood or he’s on the edge of a panic attack. Ronan steps into his space, protective. “Tell me what’s happening. Are you okay?” But Adam steps back when Ronan steps in, looking away. Then he sucks in a breath and comes back. Ronan’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it’s not arms thrown around his neck or the hand on the back of his head, pulling him down into Adam’s shoulder. 

“God, I’ve missed you.” Adam whispers, almost too quiet. Ronan exhales and for the briefest moment in time, everything disappears. Time ceases to exist. Adam’s nails scratch at the hairs on the back of his neck. Whatever he came here for, he’s found it. And then Adam pulls back and it’s gone before Ronan even really has it. The one constant of Adam Parrish during day and darkness: he comes into Ronan's life for brief, bright moments and takes all the air in the room with him when he leaves. Adam laughs a bit hysterically and runs a nervous hand through his hair. “Listen, I need a drink. Can I get you a drink?” 

Before Ronan has time to answer, to assess the situation, to again ask what the hell is going on, Gansey comes flying around the corner. “ _Ronan Lynch!_ ” he barks, loud and jovial enough to wake Glendŵr. Adam flees to the kitchen, presumably in the pursuit of his drink. Ronan stares hopelessly after him. “As I live and breathe! Is it really you under my father’s clothes?” Gansey’s presidential toothy grin could easily broker peace with all of Russia. He pulls Ronan into a quick, fraternal hug. It’s unfamiliar, nothing like Gansey's intense, strange, and un-brotherly embraces. Ronan can’t wait for this hell to end. He knows he’s only dreaming, but it’s so easy to forget. 

Gansey takes him aside and puts a drink in his hand and the rest of the night flies by in a blur. There must have been a reason he’d come here. There must have been something important. But Ronan can’t for the life of him remember what it could possibly be. Somehow he ends up alone on the fire escape. He supposes he could just jump. But he’s too terrified to find out what will happen when he wakes up. If he wakes up. 

The light flickers on in the room just to the right of the fire escape and Adam Parrish sways drunkenly to a seat on the bed. Ronan can’t help himself. He knows it’s not real. But he can’t help himself. He knocks on the window. Adam falls off the bed and Ronan tries not to laugh, he really does. But Ronan’s face is no doubt red with mirth anyway when Adam finally makes his way to the window. He stares at Ronan from the other side, looking confused and pissed off. And Ronan loves him. Now. A year ago. The moment they met. Ronan gestures to the window latch. Adam shakes his head. Ronan tries the window, and Adam shakes his head more vigorously. Ronan laughs again, because it’s funny, god damn it, and swings one leg over the barrier. 

He opens the window faster than anything Ronan’s ever seen him do, waking or dreaming. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Adam all but shouts, the words all running together. 

“What the hell does it look like?” Ronan asks, swinging the other leg over and climbing carefully through the window, one limb at a time. He almost slips, but Adam grabs hold of whatever parts of him he can reach and heaves him through. Ronan lands safely, but has to catch Adam by the elbow before he falls. 

“It looks like we almost had to call the authorities because some dumbass from Aglionby fell off the fire escape at one in the morning, is what it looks like.” Adam pulls his arm away and forces the window down, fussy. He moves diagonally towards the far wall of the room, where the bottle of champagne is resting on the dresser.

“Why did you leave the party?” Ronan asks, trying not to show his relief to be away from it himself. 

“You have more tattoos than I remember,” Adam says, not looking up from the bottle. Ronan looks down at his arms and sees nothing new, but catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the bed and sees a Celtic knot painted in red over his right cheekbone. The point of impact where his face met the glass in Declan’s car. “But I think I’ve got the upper hand on you when it comes to surprises.” 

“Whatever,” Ronan tells him. “I know you.” He’s not interested in playing any games.

“Then why did you leave?” Adam asks, defeat twisting his mouth in a way only Ronan’s cruel subconscious can muster. 

Ronan’s mouth is too dry to answer, but he feels the weight of the moment settle between them. The opportunities for failure beat rapidly in his chest, different possibilities coming to life in the room around them like independent screens on a security feed. Adam’s father towering over him in the lawn outside their trailer, red faced from shouting, kicking him again and again, even after he stops trying to crawl away. Gansey reading to Adam, unconscious in a hospital bed beside him. A check filled out and ready to be mailed to the hospital with Gansey’s sloping signature on it. Gansey supporting most of Adam’s weight in the window as they walk through the door of Monmouth Manufacturing, Adam watching from the safety of Gansey’s bed as he finds temporary places for all of Adam’s things among his own. Temporary places greatly at risk of becoming permanent. 

Adam struggling to remove his shoes and Gansey bending down to help him before insisting he rest. Gansey pulling the covers up to Adam’s shoulders before turning off the lights and closing the door. The first door Adam’s ever really been sure would stay shut. Because it was _Gansey._ The consequences of Ronan not checking his rearview mirror the one time when it mattered most. A fear, he tries to remember. A possibility. Not a reality. None of this is real. 

But it sure as hell feels real. Ronan looks away from Adam, guilt and grief forming a lump in his throat. He can feel Adam's eyes on him, waiting for a response. A grief waiting to be noticed, waiting to be felt. Ronan doesn’t know what to say. Adam removes his cufflinks and hesitates before he approaches Ronan and holds them out, a peace offering. 

“I can’t take those,” Ronan says around a lump in his throat. 

“You can,” Adam persists, taking a closed fist in one hand, spreading Ronan’s fingers open with the other, and pressing them into his palm. “You must.” Ronan catches Adam’s hand before he pulls it away. He doesn’t know what he wants to do or say. He just knows, somehow, that this is important. He catches Adam’s eye and sees something flicker back to life in his face. “It’s okay. Really,” Adam says. 

Ronan opens his mouth. Shuts it. Comes to a decision. 

“But it’s not, is it?”

Something soft and sad blossoms across Adam’s face. A smile. Gansey emerges from within the apartment, shirt half undone. Adam takes two steps back from Ronan, sleeves cuffless. Questions unanswered. 

“There you are,” Gansey breathes out, a sound that comes out with a release and a finality that silences any doubt Ronan had left about the nature of their relationship. Gansey crosses the distance between them in less than three strides, planting a chaste kiss on Adam’s forehead. Adam’s hand flies to his neck and innocently rubs away some of the tension it finds there, revealing a plain but elegant ring, delicate and inarguable against Adam’s pale skin. An icy feeling heavy enough to bring Ronan to his knees finds its way into his heart through his lungs at the sight. Unable to fight the intention clear and unhidden in the lines of Gansey’s face, body, voice. 

“Thought I’d lost you,” Gansey purrs. He doesn’t seem to notice Ronan, lifting the burden of champagne from Adam’s more than capable hands. It’s all Ronan can do to try to keep breathing; at the flushed skin of Gansey’s chest, exposed where his shirt is unbuttoned, the confidence his body has before Adam’s, the anticipation radiating off of him. Ronan feels invisible, the only card he’d thought to play belonging to the wrong deck. This happens sometimes in his dreams, his subconscious showing him what could have been and punishing him for it. 

“No such luck, I’m afraid.” Adam slurs back in response, intimate and honest even through layers of intoxication. 

Ronan feels himself become invisible, giving in to his self-sabotage and letting his subconscious cut him out of the picture. He wishes he could go back to the fire escape and jump. Fall. Force himself to wake up. Gansey pops the cork, letting champagne drip all over his white carpet, foam running down his fingers to his wrist and his elbow. 

Gansey watches Adam as Adam watches the liquid run over Gansey’s skin, eyes drinking him in as he takes a swig of Declan’s overpriced gift. Not even that was Ronan’s idea in the end, every piece of his influence in this world shifting ownership. Even the responsibility of Adam’s rescue was handed off to someone else. Ronan doesn’t know what to do with this. He doesn’t know what his dreams are trying to tell him or how he’s supposed to respond. Gansey makes a pleasurable noise in the back of his throat at the taste and pulls off, busying himself with refilling Adam’s discarded glass. 

“My hero,” Adam whispers, and Ronan shivers as Gansey puts the bottle on the table and his hand creeps down to tug at Adam’s belt loop. Ronan’s stomach is tying itself in knots. 

But then, to make it so much worse, Adam, who is apparently still aware of Ronan’s presence, eyes him with something akin to a challenge before throwing the glass back and drinking deep, his head following, exposing the line of his body to Gansey. And Gansey, now finished pretending to have entered the room without a motive, seizes Adam from around the waist and pulls Adam’s body against his own, breaking his balance. 

Time slows down as Gansey leans in to press his mouth against the congregation of freckles pooled at the hollow of Adam’s neck, as Adam hisses out a quiet, pleased sound. He takes Gansey’s face in both hands, laughing into Gansey’s hair. It’s a bright, beautiful sound, and it destroys whatever Ronan thought he had left to hold on to. Under any other circumstance, Adam’s laugh would rip out some of the darkness and rot he feels and leave something in its place equally as bright and beautiful as that sound. 

Every time Adam laughs Ronan feels almost capable of flight. He can’t even imagine what it would feel like to have Adam in his arms when it happens, to be the one responsible for making it happen, to make Adam laugh like that at something he’d said or done. Like catching lightning in a bottle. 

Gansey teases his mouth along all the lines in Adam’s throat and shoulders, the buttons of his shirt easily slipping out of their holes under his grip without too much of a fuss. It’s exactly the kind of fabric that comes apart easily, on purpose. Ronan doesn’t know if the buttons on Adam’s shirt were designed to be easy like that or if they’ve just been worn from use long enough that they forget to be barriers between unseen skin and the desire of the world it must move through. 

If this moment were anything other than a hell painstakingly assembled by all of Ronan’s worst fears, Ronan would be able to look away, to move towards the door, to disappear and never return. Maybe he’d believe it if the beautiful fabric hanging loosely on Adam’s shoulders wasn’t just another archaic and uselessly pretty thing bestowed upon him by hands tossing old money at his problems. Like an old plaid shirt or worn jeans, anything that just says _Adam---_ instead of Gansey’s young, anemic, drunk Cinderella-story version of a trophy wife. 

It’s not good enough to just not believe it. Gansey’s mouth is still on Adam’s body, paying tribute to the source of that sound until Adam’s eyes have closed and he’s putty in Gansey’s steadying hands. Adam’s fingers are tangled in Gansey’s hair and he pulls tighter and tighter until Gansey finally grabs him around the back of his neck and pulls him into a feverish, hungry kiss. 

Gansey’s wandering hold on Adam’s body is not as gentle or as soft as Ronan would have thought. It’s none of the things Ronan has come to associate with Gansey. Polite, careful, respectful Gansey does not use his body to take control. He does not use alcohol to make other bodies pliable to his advances. And Adam, for that matter, does not let himself be made pliable. 

But here they both are. And here Adam is, letting Gansey touch him, kiss him, reverently remove articles of clothing. His eyes unfocused, his hands reaching for more champagne. It makes Ronan feel sick. Like watching a bird trying to drag itself out of an oil spill. 

It’s just a dream. 

But Ronan has never seen Adam and Gansey alone together. So how would he even know? 

Something changes. The birds chirp outside the window and a gentle breeze blows through branches. Ronan can feel it on his face and he turns his head away from the scene in front of him to find it. Shadows dance before his eyes as they slowly open to the outlines of leaves framed by sunlight beating down on his skin. The smell of air, of grass, of soil in the early morning replacing the smell of alcohol and sweat. 

Ronan feels his body returning to itself. His eyes open slowly to see the light coming through the open door to the tent. He lets out a sigh and breathes deeply, regaining the freedom in his lungs with each new inhalation. Gansey and Blue are building a fire a little ways off while Noah is mixing something in a bowl with a plastic fork and what can only be called vigor. 

Ronan’s never felt so grateful to be just where he is, with all of his friends just as they are, and all of his terrible and familiar waking complications. He feels like a sailor touching land for the first time in years. He always does when he wakes. He spends all day thinking about what he might dream when he closes his eyes, only to more and more often thank God for the privilege to open them at the end and leave all of it behind. 

Soft breaths come and go beside him and he turns his head to see Adam still dreaming less than a foot away. Ronan just looks. And looks. And looks. He both hates and worships whoever’s bright idea it was to only bring one cramped tent for the five of them. One the one hand, it was impossible to get comfortable at night when they were all piled on top of one another, but on the other, Ronan could sleep beside Adam and no one would question him. He turns on his side and lets Adam’s slow breathing soothe him. He’s uncomfortable with just how vulnerable it makes him feel. But after what he’s just woken up from, he gives himself a fucking break. 

Adam looks so like himself out here, his freckles fully visible in the sunlight, calm dusting over his body, bone deep and releasing itself to the carriage of dirt under the thin film of the tent. At first glance he looks like any other boy his age. Sloppy, figuring it out as he goes, anxious to grow and desperate to fit in. But if anyone bothered to look again, they’d see that most of him was hidden underneath: the angry boy from the trailer park hiding a voice that defends and challenges Ronan, even to the police, even beaten and scared. The dead-eyed smirk that follows surviving years of abuse---and blaming himself for it every day---sewn into the skin over a soul that speaks to trees. A car mechanic; _I will be your hands, I will be your eyes._ A dutiful keeper of quiet and troubling secrets. 

None of Ronan’s secrets are quiet. Certainly none of his secrets about quiet boys. Even the old clothes Adam sleeps in seem sacred, frayed and worn with little holes and signs everywhere that they’d been lived in and chosen and loved. Ronan hopes to one day relate. 

“In sex tribulationibus liberabo te et in septima non tanget te malum.” Ronan hardly recognizes his voice, quiet though it is.

Adam’s eyebrows draw together, his body ready to move but his mind still unguarded and honest. “Ffffuck this.” Ronan challenges himself not to look away. 

“What, Adam Parrish is too civilized to sleep under the stars?” Adam’s eyes blink themselves awake, clearing the night away. He sniffs, considering.

“The stars are fine. It’s the tree roots up my ass I’m ungrateful for.” 

“Haha. Treefucker.” 

Adam sighs and tries to settle back down into the ground, looking suddenly exhausted again. “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” he says. 

Ronan laughs once and feels something in his hand. All the color drains from his face when he looks down and sees the ivory cufflinks, still beautiful, still cutting him into pieces. He tries so hard not to let the dread of the dream filter back into this moment. But it’s too late and the horror too fresh and plain for Adam to see. And oh, the things Adam can see. 

“What is it?” he asks, with a small note of worry. No buildup. No shame. Just asks the question. Like he’s just allowed to do that. Ronan takes a deep breath and uncurls his fingers, holding them out for Adam to inspect. Adam leans down to take a look and Ronan lets himself breathe unwatched for a few seconds before Adam resurfaces, a curiosity there between them that begins to fill a piece of Ronan otherwise vacant and cold with surety and warmth. There’s a question over time growing familiar in Adam’s eyes that Ronan’s becoming less and less willing to keep his own from answering. 

“I---” Ronan ejects before his mouth glues itself shut again. Damn it. Adam laughs at the look on his face, breaking the tension. 

“Sorry. None of my business, apparently.” 

Ronan wants to say something. He just doesn’t know how. And he wants to say something more than he knows what to say. Instead he says, carefully slipping the cufflinks into his pocket, “I’m glad you’re okay.” 

Adam sits up. 

“I don’t remember much.” Ronan feels bad. He doesn’t even know why anymore. He just wants to pick up something heavy and fling it into the shitty little campfire Blue and Gansey are proving only debatably successful at urging into existence outside the tent. None of this is going how he expected. But he didn’t expect anything. It’s all just shit. 

“Well, I do.” Ronan spits out, then shuts the hell up. He brings a hand up to touch his face and feels a bruise forming. “Just. Never mind, forget I brought it up at all.” 

Adam laughs again and the sun breaks through the clouds. He wishes even that didn’t piss him off. But here he is. And he’s about to find a way to really put an end to his misery when Adam beats him to it.

“You don’t have to be like that.” It sounds like he might have said something else, but Adam’s looking over Ronan’s shoulder. 

Ronan turns his head over to see Noah sitting cross legged and gazing back, unblinking. “Do you want some soup?” he asks, bright and innocent. Adam looks at the mixing bowl and its questionable contents. One of which is sunscreen, judging by the smell. 

“No," Adam sighs, pleasant but tired. "But _he_ does.” 

Ronan shoves Adam playfully and Noah ducks his head in through the opening to give the inside of the tent a quick sniff and then pulls back, nodding. “You didn’t change after work,” Noah says by way of explanation, a secret little something hidden in his eyes. “I _love_ the smell of gasoline.” Noah waggles his eyebrows obnoxiously. Ronan glares. 

“Hey---" Ronan hisses when Noah reaches up to curiously poke at Ronan’s face where the bruise is forming. But the touch isn't really unkind, so Ronan lets him. Noah presses a little too close and he winces. “ _Noah._ ”

“ _Noah…"_ Noah repeats spookily, showing his teeth like a predator. But Ronan blinks and he’s gone. 

“Bad dreams?” Adam gestures to the mark forming on his face. Ronan smiles, expression maybe a little more vulnerable than he'd like, wondering what he could possibly say to encapsulate what he just emerged from. A noise escapes his throat, small and bitter and vaguely resembling laughter.

“You have no idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "In sex tribulationibus liberabo te et in septima non tanget te malum" = "I shall deliver thee in six troubles yea in seven there shall no evil touch thee." 
> 
> Translation for the rest of us: 
> 
> "I will protect you."


	7. Chapter 7

Adam rips open a box of graham crackers and a bar of chocolate to complete the holy trinity of camping breakfasts. Ronan refuses to eat charred sugar and instead rips open a new bag of marshmallows, shoving them into his mouth by the handful. Blue’s look of disgust is truly something to see in the pale morning light. 

Gansey adores going camping with friends. 

“Ronan, seriously? That’s our last bag.” Blue doesn’t put up with marshmallow thievery, even among comrades. Ronan spits a wad of chewed up marshmallows into his hands and offers it up to Blue, his poker face fully intact even with a long trail of spit from his tongue to the vile mess in his fingers. Blue physically recoils and gags. 

“And there goes my appetite for s’mores,” Adam says, unable to look away from the pillowy abomination Ronan’s brandishing like a trophy. 

“More for me, then.” Ronan smiles and offers his pillowy abomination to Adam, who reaches cautiously to add his own half-eaten marshmallow to the pile. Ronan offers it to Noah, who looks too closely at it, makes a strangled noise, and blips out of existence. “Aw man,” Ronan chokes out through a mouth full of pre-chewed marshmallows. “Come back, Noah, it’s safe.” Only some of Ronan’s words are audible. 

“Did you and Blue sleep at all last night?” Adam wonders at the bags collected under Blue and Gansey’s eyes and their collective lack of dishevelment. Gansey looks up from his pile of chocolate and marshmallows, confused. 

“We only got here an hour ago. I drove through the night...” Adam and Ronan exchange a look. Ronan swallows his last bite of marshmallow before reaching for one discarded by Blue’s feet. She looks like she’s about to kick him for it and he quickly retreats after obtaining it. 

“No, that can’t be right... Ronan and I were passed out in there for like, nine hours at least.” 

“It felt like about 9 hours to me, too,” comes a shy voice directly to the right of Ronan’s ear. Ronan startles and flings his marshmallow at Noah. Adam holds up a hand to bring attention back to him. 

“Okay, so it felt like 9 hours to Noah. And you guys helped put the tent together and then, what? When did we diverge?”

Blue looks as if she’s thinking very hard and Gansey looks as if he’s about to fall asleep right where he is. “I think,” Gansey begins tiredly. “I think we were in there for maybe, like, fifteen minutes just getting stuff set up. And then we came out here to make some marshmallows.” 

Blue blinks once before speaking. “But, if the last twenty minutes for us felt like nine hours to the rest of you freaks, that would certainly explain why the both of you look so fucking chipper on so little sleep.” 

After eating, Gansey spreads a map loosely resembling sections of Cabeswater over the grass and starts to pencil in their location. 

“It’s not gonna work,” Ronan grumbles a foot away. “Nothing stays the same here.” 

Gansey looks up at him, mischief on his face. 

“That’s not actually true. But I am curious to know your thoughts.” 

Ronan rolls his eyes and rips some clovers out of the dirt, silenced. 

“Gansey’s right,” Adam says from the other side of the map. Ronan rolls his eyes the other way, smirking petulantly. “ _And_ Ronan’s right. You’re both right.” They both look up at Adam.

“They can’t both be right.” Blue Sargent’s scathing logic from Adam’s side of the map gives voice to their questions. Adam’s lips turn up just slightly at the corner when he takes a pen out of his pocket and marks an _x_ on four sections of the map. 

“Except, they are. Look,” he explains. “We’ve always passed this cave coming and going more than once. The seasons change as they please and some of the landscape sort of… shuffles, but there are also places that don’t follow the same rules.”

Gansey smiles at Ronan, the proof speaking for itself. It's a draw. Ronan rolls his eyes and shoves Gansey's arm.

“At least one of those places we don’t have access to through Adam’s influence.” Gansey tries to look a little less pleased with himself. Adam feels Noah reappear beside him before he sees him, a wave of exhaustion crashing through him when Noah’s smudgy cheek comes to rest on his shoulder, eyes blinking with a strange clarity down at Adam’s pencil marks on the map. 

“And,” Adam jumps back in, stifling a yawn leaning more heavily on his hand. “There are other places, I’m sure of it… I just. Haven’t tried to _access_ them yet. Or---something.” Gansey’s eyes flicker from Noah to the map and back up to Noah. Something dark moves, snake-like, just behind his eyes. 

To Ronan’s annoyance and Gansey’s inflamed ego, the map is accurate. When they reach the spot indicated by one of Adam’s markers, the five of them stand before a dark and slightly ominous entrance to a cave. Just out of the corner of his eye, Ronan can see Blue reach a hand to Gansey’s shoulder, a look of worry crossing over her face like a comet in the night, bold and fierce and then gone in an instant. Gansey reaches up to place his own hand over hers, smiles, and then Ronan watches as the two of them breathe a little easier through the connection.

Ronan’s body reacts without his permission, jaw going tense and hands folding into loose fists. He’s slowly getting better at letting Gansey have things that don’t include him, but he’s not gotten better at dealing with it. 

Adam goes first into the cave with little ceremony, taking a flashlight out of his bag and disappearing boldly into the mouth of the cave. Noah glides after him, hot on his heels. He pauses at the threshold, gaze landing on Ronan with uncertainty, then he trots after Adam to catch up. 

Ronan sighs, ripping his eyes away from Gansey and Blue, and sticks his hands in his pockets grumpily before heading in after them. Ronan thinks bitterly that Gansey can just make out with Blue instead of going spontaneously spelunking with his friends. What does Ronan care. He doesn’t. It’s not like any of this is for Richard Campbell Gansey III. 

But just inside the cave lies a frightening darkness. Ronan stops walking when he realizes he can’t see even a foot in front of him. 

_Uh oh._

Ronan picks up the pace, eyes searching for Adam’s flashlight, but they don’t find it. 

_Well, shit._

Ronan has no idea when Adam and Noah disappeared into the cave, but it wasn’t the same time of day as Ronan is entering it now. He risks a look behind him and his suspicions are confirmed, moonlight painting the trees and the grass outside of the tunnel overhead. 

Ronan does not panic. He turns around and continues walking, trusting that Cabeswater will bend to his will. 

If he needs it to. 

Adam narrowly avoids breaking an ankle not watching where he’s going, waiting for Cabeswater to reach him in some way. It’s normally tugged his sleeve in one direction or another by now, but the silence, accompanied by a distant echo of water, are all that he can hear. The distant echo of water becomes less so when Adam’s shoe breaks the surface and falls into it up to his knee. 

_“Ah---”_ Adam’s voice bounces off the stone walls around him as he rips his leg out of the water and stumbles back against. 

“Ah…?” Noah echoes from a little ways ahead of him.

Adam shines his light in the direction of the voice to find him crouched under a crevice opposite.

Adam opens his mouth to call out to Noah, but Noah shakes his head erratically. He grins widely at Adam, the light not quite reflecting off of his teeth.

“Noah…” Adam trails off, and squinting in the insufficient light, he can see Noah cradling something tight against his body. “What is that?” 

“Ahh…” Noah repeats, more somber, breathing strangely. Adam follows the movement to Noah’s hands to see his insides spilling out of a horrific wound in his abdomen. He holds weakly to what he can, but mostly he huffs out quick little gasps that turn into unreasonable laughter. “I… haha, I think… oh, that _hurts_ ,” he barely finishes, voice trembling. 

A moment later Noah hiccups and then laughs hysterically, panic filling his lungs and then expelling it over and over. Noah’s eyes have moved on to something behind Adam, only the whites of his eyes visible in the beam of the flashlight. He freezes when his foot slips on a rock and it collides with the ones nearby it. Adam hears something behind him move in response to the sound before he sees Noah’s mouth downturned in fear. He spins with his flashlight in time for whatever it is to rip through his shoulder on its way to Noah. The flashlight Adam had been holding hits the wall and goes dark and Noah screams in horror. 

Blue hears a yell and races to the sound, ignoring Gansey’s breathless warnings from a few paces behind her. She reaches a wall and stops, Gansey almost crashing into her. From the light in Gansey’s hand, they see that Ronan’s frozen, stock-still against the wall of the cave. His eyes are closed and his jaw is set and his breathing is shallow, a forced calm. Gansey reaches for him, but Blue stops him. 

“Wait---” 

Just as she speaks, he sees it. A large nest of eggs hidden just under where he was intending to take his next step. Ronan’s surrounded on all sides, barely a rock under his heel. He and Gansey are locked in a gaze together, communicating in some silent language Blue can’t translate. 

She hears a hiss when something brushes gently against her ankle. She looks down to see an enormous green snake. Her hands fly to her mouth to keep a scream from escaping, but when she looks back up, it’s quiet and she’s alone.

“Blue?” She hears Noah call. “What’s wrong?” 

Blue turns around to look at him, but it’s too dark. She takes her phone out of her pocket and turns on the light, shining it one way, then the other. Gansey and Ronan are nowhere to be found. 

“Did you hear someone yell?” Blue demands, her voice shaking. She shines the light on Noah. Something’s off about him, but she can’t pin it down. 

“No… I got separated from Adam somewhere and went looking for him, but,” he says morosely, eyes focusing very hard on Blue’s cell phone. “I couldn’t find him.” 

“Noah, focus,” Blue steps closer as she speaks. “Did you or did you not hear someone in need of help?” 

Noah’s head turns, a reptilian tilt where his eyes remain on the light in Blue’s hands but the rest of him seems to float off in another direction. 

“Noah…” she tries again, stepping forward. “We have to get the hell out of here and find the others - or find _help._ ”

A finger links shyly with one of hers. 

“Sorry,” Noah shivers, blinking. “Something’s, something’s, somethin---” 

“It’s okay,” Blue stops him, swallowing around the lump in her throat when he begins to rock in place. “Just, stick by me, okay?” Noah nods, screwing his eyes shut.

Adam runs. He has no idea what direction he’s headed without the flashlight, but he thanks whoever’s listening that he hasn’t fallen to his death or slammed into a wall face-first and broken his nose beyond repair. All he hears are his breaths and his heart beating loudly in his chest. Something’s following not too far behind, and Adam knows it. He can feel it. His shoulder _hurts_ and something’s probably dislocated, but he doesn’t have any time to worry about that yet. 

Just when Adam thinks maybe he’s lost for good and he’ll die somewhere deep and unknown in an underground tunnel too deep to excavate, he hears birdsong. Adam feels his body slowing, his legs and chest burning from the chase.

Adam doesn’t come to a full stop, afraid it’ll catch up to him. But he feels something tugging at the back of his mind and he almost cries out in relief when Cabeswater makes itself known. If he’s clear enough, loud enough, Cabeswater always comes to his aid. Adam reaches, looking for an opening, dragging his hand along the rock wall until he feels vines, fresh air, dirt. He pushes and the earth yields under his hands, sunlight filtering in through a crack. Adam pushes harder, the soil and rocks falling under insistent pressure. 

The relief is short-lived. 

Adam hears an inhuman cry echoing from within the tunnels and a blinding, heart-stopping fear returns to him. He rips fistfulls of rocks and dirt out of his way. Ignoring splinters, ignoring sharp edges and the itching pain in his knuckles and the blood. Begging, pleading, throwing his body against the crumbling wall until he smells grass, water, air and his fingers finally push through the cover of dirt and vine and close around the base of a root. Adam forces his way through with his other arm and takes the tree root into both hands and _pulls,_ kicking away from the wall with his feet to bring the earth crashing down over top of him. Sunlight---Adam’s never been so grateful to see the sun---shines warm and forgiving on his dirt-covered face and he drags his body upward, pushing his head and shoulders through. 

Adam feels something wet drip onto his ankle bone and a chill runs all the way up his spine. And now, Adam gets angry. He’s practically dragged himself out of an unmarked grave and _now_ it catches up to him. Adam grits his teeth and forces his body up, out, over the grass. Kicking back with his shoes violently and feeling something soft falling away for a moment only to rush back and latch onto his knee like a vice. Adam sobs helplessly as he drags his legs out of the cave, frustration and fear pushing him on to at least get onto the grass, Cabeswater ringing in his deaf ear in alarm, and then----

_He’s out._

Adam drags the rest of his body into the sunlight, his lungs burning and his muscles weak when he collapses onto the grass. His shoulder feels like it's broken, pain pooling in now that he's no longer in any danger. Adam rolls onto his back and covers his eyes, shaking and coughing through the shock. Adam Parrish is not a crier in most situations, but under the circumstances, he lets it slide just this once. 

When Adam dares to look down at his legs, there’s nothing but bone. The remnants of a long-dead human hand coiled tightly around his ankle. 

Adam falls back into the grass and the everything goes dark.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes I did switch Gansey with Adam in one of these scenes. Yes it is because they needed more time together for this chapter to make sense. However, considering this scene is 5X funnier to me with these two, get excited. 
> 
> Also, I promise there's a lot more Ronan and Adam to come. And bits of it will show up later. 
> 
> <3

Blue and Noah walk and walk and somehow find an exit. An impossible circular tunnel of rock and root spreads out before them. Blue pinches her eyes shut, holding tightly to Noah’s hand as they step out into the light. 

“Blue,” Noah squeezes her hand. “We made it. We’re out.” 

Noah’s laughing when Blue opens her eyes. The time on Blue’s phone is almost the same as when they would have gone in. Give or take a minute. 

“I may not be psychic. But even I can tell that this place does not want us here,” Blue says, keeping her voice calm. 

“The girl is right,” Comes a woman’s voice from over their heads. “This place is not safe for visitors.” 

Blue looks up, spins around, and Noah goes with her. Gazing from over the top of the rocky tunnel at them is a woman who at first glance appears normal. Her dark hair is very long and reminiscent of Persephone’s, with only the front tied back away from her face, falling down with the rest along her back in braids. Something warm in honey-brown eyes when they land on Blue. She hesitates, her eyelids fluttering between one breath and the next, and then she slides down the side of the tunnel with a charming lack of grace. Once she’s landed on both feet, the woman extends a hand out for Blue to shake. 

“It’s good to meet you, finally.” 

Blue looks down at her red dress, the many, many rings on her fingers. Then up to the hair, the face, the eyes. That infuriating, knowing look being directed at her. Blue wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this woman materialize before her within the walls of 300 Fox Way. Perhaps she should be more alarmed that the woman seems to _know_ her. Blue waits another beat, then takes the outstretched hand. 

“Hi, friend,” Blue exhales, her other hand still hanging on to Noah’s like an anchor. “How the hell do we know each other?” 

Something sad flashes over those expressive eyes before hiding itself from view. 

“Friend of a friend,” the woman responds breathlessly, her eyes searching Blue’s face for some sign of recognition. “ _Of_ a friend of a friend, possibly. But you were about three when I would have seen you last.” 

The woman’s head is tilted as she looks into Blue’s eyes. One hand folds over the other, encasing Blue’s hand in a coffin of silver rings. 

“What’s your name?” Blue asks, blinking and looking away from the intensity of her stare. 

“Sorry, child,” she laughs, that warmth returning. “I don’t see very many people these days. My name is…”

The woman trails off when she finally looks---really looks----at Noah beside Blue. Noah shrinks away, a hand over his eye, hiding the mark. 

“Winifred,” she finishes, her voice a question, eyes still on Noah. “Or so I have been called.” 

Gansey and Ronan find each other close to the mouth of the cave, Gansey’s flashlight blinding Ronan until his eyes adjust. 

“Dude, I thought you were the fucking _rapture.”_ Ronan’s laughing, surprised to hear how hoarse his voice is. He wonders morbidly how long he’s been here, having only registered about five minutes of it. 

“Sorry to disappoint.” Gansey returns easily, but Ronan can tell he’s shaken. 

“Ready to blow this joint?” 

“As soon as humanly possible,” Gansey says quietly, Ronan stepping closer to hear. “Please.” 

Ronan turns and pauses. The mouth of the cave is less than three feet from where they stand. Ronan stops himself before he panics. If he thinks about it too much, he’s afraid of what Cabeswater might do in the face of his fear. 

Once outside of the cave, Ronan breathes in fresh air greedily.

“Guys…” 

They both crane their necks to find Noah crouched like a creature on the small cliff just above them. He appears as if he’s just been the sole victim to heavy rainfall, water dripping steadily from his hair and clothes. A drop of water lands on Ronan’s face and he blinks a false tear out of his eye. 

“Blue’s fine,” Noah says slowly and distantly, mouth visibly unraveling, but voice filled with a dark and delicate kindness. “She’s at the Red House.” 

The facade slides back seamlessly over Ronan’s features. Ganey’s surprised to see it. He never really notices it when it’s gone, but he feels an abrupt change when it returns. He speaks for the both of them. “Can you tell us what happened?” 

Noah looks out over them at the water and a memory, a thought, some form of recognition possesses him. “I… think so.” Noah replies dreamily, only half present. His head tilts like a puppy’s, ear floating down to rest on a hunched shoulder before falling motionless as death. The movement, or the lack of it, reminds Gansey of a rodent caught in the open, hearing a noise and knowing too intimately and too late that it’s being watched. “I’m… not welcome here. You’ll have to find your own way. I’ll see you wh...” 

There must have been an end to Noah’s sentence, but the muscles he uses to control speech become unfixed. Then Gansey and Ronan watch, horrified, as the skin over Noah’s smudged cheekbone loosens and tears, his jaw giving way to one side, detaching from the rest of his face like the seat of a broken swing. Noah’s eyes roll away from one another and his head falls back, the gruesome hollow of his throat gaping at the sky overhead before he simply returns to dust and crumbles. Leaving only a cracked, fissured skull displaying a final and contorted surprise in disjoined bones. 

Gansey doesn’t know he’s stopped breathing until he feels Ronan steadying him with a hand on his shoulder. He blinks stars out of his vision, matching his breaths to Ronan’s. 

“Let’s just get the fuck out of here.” Ronan says quietly, not meeting Gansey’s eye. 

“Do we know where we’re going?” Gansey asks, feeling his shoulder go cold again when Ronan’s hand falls back to his side. 

“I do,” Ronan confesses. “I’ve been there before.” 

Ronan and Gansey take their time, avoiding all entrances to the cave they come across. The narrow path along the trees is beautiful and Gansey allows the silence that falls around them and the wonder of Cabeswater to ease some of his tension. Instead of the panic he’d felt underground, there’s only their footfalls and the crunch of dead leaves. Birds. Bugs. The smell of dirt. The sun. The light breeze. The echo of water running over rocks and sand growing quieter and quieter at their backs. 

Gansey follows Ronan up tree roots the size of buses, through shallow streams, and over rocks. He desperately hopes Ronan knows where he’s taking them and tries to quell any fear that they’re only getting more and more lost as the sun begins to set when Ronan stops suddenly and looks up. 

“We’ve been going in circles.” Ronan sighs, frustrated. “We’ve been going in circles around this fucking railroad track for like, a whole shit-glazed hour and a motherfucking half.” 

“Colorful.” Gansey deadpans. 

“Shut up, Richard.” Ronan shines his teeth at Gansey and Gansey rolls his eyes, sniffing dryly. Then he watches in mild disbelief when Ronan finds a handhold in the stone face above them and scrambles up it in as dignified a manner as possible.

“Um---” Gansey looks up at Ronan, unsteadily clinging to the rock face, apparently reincarnated as a mountain goat. “What the hell are we doing, exactly?” 

“What exactly the hell does it look like?” 

“It looks like,” Gansey continues, “you’re about three seconds away from breaking your neck. And for what, exactly?” Ronan looks up at the railroad tracks and then back down at him, smiling madly. Gansey sets his jaw and puts his hands on his hips. “No. _Absolutely_ not.” 

Ronan extends a hand and the message is clear. Follow me. 

Gansey hopes the whites of his eyes express the sheer amount of swears lurking behind them. He still wishes they about 50% more Fuck You and about 100% less Complete And Absolute Terror. 

“Gansey, come on.” Ronan says. “Trust me.” 

Gansey can feel fear marking the lines of his face when he takes the offered hand and lets Ronan pull him up to his tiny ledge of the cliff.

They make slow but steady progress towards the train tracks, Gansey putting more trust in Ronan’s sense of direction than he probably ever will again. Once Ronan reaches the top, Gansey sees him crouch low, hands out to his sides to keep his balance. He rocks from foot to foot, testing the durability of the wood. It gives a bit under his left foot and he rocks back to his right, almost losing his balance. And Gansey, still shaking and on all fours, trying to stay as close to the rock face as possible, shoves his head roughly into the crook of his arm to stop his head from spinning. This whole rock-climbing adventure would be going very differently if he had anything tethering him to the cliff, anything keeping him from flying off with a strong gust of wind and falling to his death. 

Ronan thrusts his hands unceremoniously under Gansey’s armpits and hoists him semi-safely onto the tracks, but not before Gansey releases a long and creative, though still pitiful string of curses. 

“Ffffffuck... you...” Gansey attempts to growl but knows he fails, shaking like a goddamn chihuahua too afraid to rip away from Ronan’s grip on his shirt. 

“Is that, like, a request?” Ronan smirks condescendingly, eyes mischievous. 

“Ass...hole...” Gansey wrings the sound out of his throat, hands gripping Ronan’s shirt so tight they’ve lost almost all circulation. If his eyes were any wider they’d pop out of his head. 

_Jesus,_ Ronan thinks, _I broke Dick Gansey_. 

The first few steps have to be coaxed out of him, but once they’re off, they’re off. The wood of the track is terrifying even where it’s least rotted so Gansey walks right on the line, which is actually probably more dangerous, given his chances of falling. The two of them make their way across carefully and quietly, eyes on their destination.

Halfway across, Gansey glances left and sees Ronan sweating. So maybe he was wrong. Maybe they’re both in over their heads. And maybe he's going to milk that for all that it's worth. 

“Hey, asshole,” Gansey calls from his side of the tracks, still shaking. Ronan doesn’t look up. Gansey clears his throat and tries again, ignoring the whimper in his voice. “H-hey asshole.” Gansey laughs at how his voice sounds. It helps. Ronan glares. “ _Don’t look down_.” 

Ronan takes a boot off and throws it at him. Gansey yelps and contorts his body trying to not get hit. It’s not a near miss. It’s not even close. He does not watch one half of a pair of combat boots fly off the railroad tracks and land somewhere in the woods below. He definitely does not calculate just how much money Ronan literally just threw off a cliff. Adam and Blue’s shared judgment of Aglionby ignorance seizes control of his thoughts for a moment. He starts to feel depressed. He stops thinking about it. 

“What if you just killed me?” Gansey wonders aloud, accusatory, the shoe having missed him by at least five feet. 

“Well, I didn’t.” 

“Yeah, but what if you did, huh?” Gansey can’t help himself. “How would you live with yourself?” Ronan takes a surprisingly long time to formulate a response, but when it comes, Gansey wants to take his own shoe off and beat himself silly with it. 

“...I wouldn’t.” 

Gansey sighs. He doesn't know what to say in the face of that. He never has and he never will. When they’ve got maybe a third left of the journey, Ronan makes the mistake of looking over the edge to his left and freezes. Gansey gets a few feet ahead of him before he notices. “Ronan?” No answer. “You’re not _scared,_ are you?” Gansey taunts jokingly. But Ronan’s still stuck where he is, staring down at the valley below. 

Before he has time to chicken out, Gansey carefully backtracks to Ronan and extends a hand. Ronan’s eyes go wide, like a dog that’s been beaten one too many times. 

“Go on, take it,” Gansey wants to tease him further, but it comes out too genuine. “I promise I won’t let you fall...” 

Ronan’s face goes through about three different colors in less than a minute. He looks simultaneously furious and relieved, but he takes Gansey’s hand and mumbles something under his breath. 

“Sorry? What was that?” Ronan’s face turns another lovely color at Gansey’s probing. 

“I said this is _gay as shit_.” Ronan delivers, very seriously. Gansey laughs so hard Ronan has to steady him rather than the other way round. 

“Your secret’s safe with me.” Gansey laughs, Ronan’s hand clinging to his like a lifeline. Little does Ronan know, Gansey is still pissing himself, it’s just easier for him to handle if he pretends he’s helping someone else not to do the same. But his hands are still shaking, so Gansey’s sure Ronan can tell.

At the Red House, Noah is wrapped in a blanket that smells of dust and use with a cup of hot cocoa in his hands and an animated smile tugging playfully at his face. He sits curled in on himself, sinking into the couch, only his fingers sticking out to hold the mug. Blue darts back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, filling Noah in on details she acquires while helping Winifred with dinner. 

“She’s had seven sons, all of them came wandering out of the forest the same as we did.” Blue whispers. Noah nods from beneath the blanket, gingerly taking a sip of his hot cocoa. 

“Fascinating.” 

Blue wants to talk about It. But she knows they can’t do it here in fear of sending Noah into another spiral. He’s been disappearing and reappearing at random since they entered the cave and she doesn’t want to push him. They also can’t do it now because that would be rude and this woman is being so incredibly generous. 

Blue has decided she likes Winifred. She’s about to say this to Noah when the woman appears in the doorway and ushers her back into the kitchen. 

“I found it!” Winifred’s holding bottles of amber liquid with white labels stickered over the glass. Each has a name written in cursive that sounds like it’s been stolen from Wonderland, although Blue has been assured that they’re all quite earthly and scientific. “Thuja---it helps to stop things from growing that, well, _shouldn’t._ ” 

Blue takes one of the bottles from her and gazes down at it like it’s something precious. 

“What do you think? Useful?” 

It takes Blue a moment to realize Winifred’s actually asking. She’s actually looking for an opinion. Blue’s not sure what to do with all this power. 

“Oh my god, yeah. _Beyond_ useful.” 

“Good,” Winifred’s eyes dart mischievously to Noah on the couch before returning to rest on Blue, her expression sheepish. “I slipped some into his hot chocolate.” 

Oh, yes. 

Blue has definitely decided she likes Winifred. 


	9. Chapter 9

Somewhere lost in the forest, Adam Parrish wakes with leaves on his eyes and vines anchoring him to the earth, as if worried he might simply drift off into the atmosphere without them. Maybe he would, who knows? Adam’s never dealt with magic like this before, after all. He clears his throat and sets to work freeing his limbs. 

Once Adam’s body is almost his again, a bone-deep ache burns to life in his shoulder where he’d collided with something in the cave. Cabeswater pulls at him, like a toddler tugging on a sleeve, nervous. He’s not certain nervousness is appropriate, but it was always what he felt when he had to ask for things as a toddler. 

Adam feels dirty.

Not in the way he normally feels dirty, but in the sense that Adam’s entire body is caked in soil and clay and other contaminants he’s too nervous to identify. There are bugs in his hair and rocks in his shoes. The skeleton hand is gone, disintegrated into dust while he'd slept, like it was all just some sick, twisted dream. But finger-like bruises---startling pieces of evidence---remain. 

Adam can hear water somewhere far behind him. He licks his lips, dehydrated.

He lifts himself from the earth and moves in that direction. 

After an unknowable amount of time where Adam mostly tried to ignore the pain, the ground beneath Adam’s feet ends abruptly and he almost trips into a five-foot dropoff. 

A quarry stretches out before him in all directions, clear waters, white stoned shores. Perfect, peaceful. Reflections dance off of the walls of steep cliffs on the other side of the bank. Adam gazes up in awe at it. He wonders, not for the first time, how no one seems to be able to find this place on a map. 

Adam turns around to see where he came from, recognizing none of it. Turning back around, he feels just as lost.

But the water is there. And he feels dirty. 

Finding his way down a five-foot drop one-armed is the hard part, but he walks until he finds a shallower edge and jumps down, feet sinking into the pebbles. Adam falls forward and has to catch himself on his injured arm and he cries out, just once, before steeling himself against it.

Really, he reasons. He should be more used to dealing with pain like this on his own by now. But he’s been spoiled by the distance and the apartment. His friends. His coworkers. _Ronan…_

Adam stops himself there. He lifts his body and begins to undress. 

Once in the water, he feels infinitely better. Adam’s not sure he could describe it if he tried. The quarry has to be some kind of energy source, taking his tears, his pain, the filth from his skin and turning it into something--- _other._ He wades in deeper until the water reaches his collar bones and relaxes, letting his body float. 

_Damn,_ Adam thinks to himself. _Maybe being a bog body wouldn’t be all that bad._

Adam's body jolts in surprised laughter, swallowing water. He struggles to regain his balance, sputtering and coughing through fits of laughter before diving beneath the water to drag his fingers through his hair. If he opened his eyes, he’d see clouds of grime floating to the surface of the water above him. But he holds his breath for as long as he can, letting his body fall into the water, then breathing it out and sinking further down, feeling bubbles rush back up to air. Adam wishes he never had to come back up for air. He can't explain it, some overwhelming calm passing through and brushing every sharpened piece of him, sanding him down to smoother edges. His life would be better if he could just... stay where he is, suspended here for a time. Never leave the water.

But when Adam does break the surface of the water again, he’s never felt so clean. He runs his hands up and down his arms, brushing away dead skin cells with ease, watching in awe as callouses peel away from his hands. He can feel them rubbing away from his feet as well. Adam cups some of the water into his hands, looking down at his reflection. Imperfect and at peace. 

“Hey, what the fuck?” 

Adam starts, letting the water fall from his cupped palms and turning in the direction of the voice. His cheeks going red when he sees both Gansey and Ronan staring at him from the drop-off. He stares back, discomfort making a hasty return to Adam Parrish’s existence. Gansey waves excitedly and Adam waves back. Ronan just stares, the air filling with a kind of tension. 

Adam runs his fingers through his hair, flattening it out over his head and feeling it trail messily down the back of his neck. 

Ronan was right, it’s getting too long to be manageable. 

“Come on in, the water’s great.” He shouts back, laughter in his voice, waving them over. 

Adam shoves his discomfort down to someplace deep enough he won’t be bothered by naked bodies and water. But Ronan slides down the five-foot drop and walks to the edge of the water, the edges of his face sharp, a scowl evident on his face. 

“Get out.” 

Adam laughs. Ronan’s countenance doesn’t change. 

“You’re joking, right?” 

Ronan’s face goes dark. Gansey's hands go to his hips, leaning back on one leg and staring down at his friend. He's just as confused by Ronan's behavior as Adam. 

“No, I’m really not. Get out of the water." 

Adam says nothing. He wades deeper, up to his neck now. Ronan's expression shifts the further he pulls back into the water. The longer he waits to give into Ronan's demands, the less he sees pieces of his father waiting for him on the shore. 

“Come on, Adam…” Gansey calls from the drop-off, voice agreeable, tinged with concern. “We have to find Blue and Noah, anyhow.” 

Adam dips his chin under the water, eyes never leaving Ronan’s. He considers dipping his head underneath, disappearing to some other corner of the quarry's lake. Ronan’s lip trembles. Adam breathes out through his nose, his muscles releasing. Ronan’s worried. Adam is not in any danger. Ronan's just _worried._

And just like that, Adam's nervousness crumbles in the face of Ronan's. 

He swims back, feet touching rocks when the water is low enough to dip low on his belly when he stands up. Ronan avoids looking, collecting Adam’s clothes for him while he trudges through the water.

When Adam's completely out of the water, Ronan holds out the bundle of clothing, face turned away from him entirely. Adam takes them from him without a word, ignoring the redness of Ronan’s skin and the brightness of his eyes, looking anywhere but at Adam.

Adam smirks, drunk with power, but takes mercy on him by turning back to face the water to pull his pants over his legs. 

“ _Jesus--_ -” Gansey whistles. “Get in a fight with a bear or something, Parrish?” 

Adam ignores the question, pulling his shirt on a little quicker than necessary. He'll never get used to blemishes on his body being topics of conversation. 

“---no.” 

His voice comes out a little quieter than he thought it would and when he turns, Ronan’s closer than he was before, worry coloring his features. 

“Are you okay?” 

The question is just loud enough for Adam to hear. Private. Intimate. Adam shivers, his hand coming up to cover the pain in his shoulder. 

“It’s fine. I just---bumped into something---in the cave. That’s all.” 

Adam turns, movements jerky and unnatural. Ronan takes a step closer, hand outstretched. Adam feels too well known to be having this conversation anywhere other than in the privacy of his apartment above St. Agnes. He clears his throat, taking a step back, but the damage is done. 

“It's fucked.” 

Adam doesn’t need to look at Ronan to know something protective has bloomed to life between them. 

“I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just---Gansey’s right. We have to find Blue and Noah.” 

Ronan's hand curls into a fist, but he lets Adam move past him. 

Adam feels eyes on him the whole way to their destination. 

Blue’s asleep when they arrive, curled up on the couch with Noah. She wakes up to someone cursing loudly in the kitchen and a pot crashing to the floor. 

“ _Careful!”_ Winifred even sounds kind when she’s angry, hissing the order out through clenched teeth. 

“I am _trying,_ here---” Ronan bites back before Adam’s voice cuts him off. 

“ _Ronan..._ ” 

Blue barely hears him, his voice a pained ghost of itself, but he manages to wrangle in Ronan’s anger and for that alone, she’s impressed. Blue untangles her body from Noah’s and drags her feet over the edge of the couch. The mug that used to have hot cocoa in it is still in his grasp, now curled into Noah’s chest like something precious. Blue almost feels bad taking it from him, but he doesn’t put up a fight, eyes closed and breathing soft as if to mimic sleeping.

_Weird._

Blue makes her way quietly to the kitchen. A window is open, letting in cool night air and the sounds of crickets chirping outside. The yellow ceiling light beams down on them from above while Winifred tries to re-align Adam’s shoulder. Ronan supports him from behind, Gansey standing a few feet away, arms crossed in concern. She finds her way to him, wanting to be present, to be of comfort. 

Adam’s face is pinched and pale, filled with pain. Ronan is uncharacteristically silent from behind him, both arms wrapped securely around his waist to keep him upright. Adam's good hand is gripping Ronan's elbow in a way that has to hurt, but he makes no move to stop him. Ronan leans over to tell him something, whispering it directly into Adam’s ear. Adam nods once, sharply, and then sucks in a breath as Winifred presses his shoulder back into his body in away that almost makes his knees buckle. Adam's head falls forward and he breathes out a shaky sigh of relief when it's over, Ronan's arms the only thing holding him upright. 

“Is it good? Did we do it?” Winifred asks, brow furrowed. 

All that can be heard for a moment is Adam’s careful breaths. Ronan helps him to a chair and then hurries out of the kitchen, the front door is forced open and left to swing shut on its own. Adam’s eyes follow him, still breathing hard. 

“I think we got it,” he says, face red. 

Blue has to look away from him, the moment too intense. She wonders briefly if Ronan had to escape for the same reason and her cheeks color at the thought. Winifred hands Adam a glass full of amber liquid. Blue doesn't have time to warn him before he throws it back like a shot. 

Adam throws it back up all over the kitchen floor. Gansey laughs. Which makes Blue laugh, bumping him with her elbow. Which makes Adam laugh, shockingly, and then he vomits for real. 

“Ah… I suppose,” Winifred begins sheepishly. “I suppose that really was my fault…” 

They thank Winifred for her help and Gansey makes a note of where the house is, eager to come back when they have more time. She sends them of with herbs for Adam’s shoulder and a note stuffed into the bundle addressed to Blue for her to open at a later date. The whole day’s felt like a dream. Some good, some bad, all magical. 

Then they get back to camp to find Noah standing where the campfire used to be, holding a baggie of something in his hand. 

“Oh my stars and garters,” Gansey sings. Ronan takes a small but possessive step in front of Adam as Gansey continues, “Do my eyes deceive me? What in the world is _that_?” 

Noah blinks, birdlike. “Ronan’s been hiding things again…” he says, voice innocent. He gives the bag a little shake, jostling the contents. Noah ignores Gansey’s wide-eyed glare, expression aimed at Ronan and just dripping with entropy.

“Noah...” Ronan’s words take a while to come out, an emotional transition in their own right. “Did you find that in my backpack?” 

Noah’s eyes are inhumanly clear, reflecting strangely in the light of the moon. 

“Does it work?” 

Ronan’s smile in answer is vicious and pleased. 

“Only one way to find out.” 

What happens next is what anyone would expect. Even if Ronan’s dream drug doesn’t work as intended on Noah, it’s certainly doing _something_ , and he’s giggling madly and planking in midair suspended over the bonfire, turning himself slowly as if some unseen force is roasting him like a stuck pig. Blue is sitting next to the fire, arms wrapped around her middle with a far-off look in her eyes and a scarf wrapped several times around her head so that only her eyes peek over the top at the rest of them. 

She looks extremely beautiful like this, the image almost demanding a cigarette placed between her fingers for smoke to billow gently about her features, totally relaxed and in her element. Adam doesn’t think that it’s working on him, but he’s determined to try, so he keeps taking more and more hits. Gansey is, impossibly, becoming even more enthusiastic about Welsh history. Ronan’s outer shell peels off entirely - and it’s almost visible, Adam’s sure all of them can almost see Ronan physically climb out of his skin, like a cicada or a snake - and he starts speaking his mind and breathing more deeply, shoulders maybe a little less hunched. 

Gansey comes out of a long-winded explanation of Glyndŵr’s daughters, takes a long hard look at Ronan listening intently to him, and starts to cry. He doesn’t stop talking about Glyndŵr’s daughters, even though he’s just to the left of intelligible, but if he stops speaking Adam’s pretty sure Gansey would just unravel and turn into worms, or something equally sad and wiggly. And that would just be _too many worms_ . So Ronan takes Gansey’s hands and kisses each of them and laughs, beautifully--- _(is Adam allowed to think that?)_ \---when Gansey wipes his snot all over them both. 

Everything is just so goddamn beautiful right now. Even Gansey’s boat shoes are beautiful. And now Blue’s staring at Adam and he’s not sure why she looks so perfectly confused by him. Because all he’s doing is digging his toes and fingers into the dirt and feeling the quickened heartbeat of Cabeswater draw near and envelop the five of them. Even Noah, who’s not touching the ground at all. 

“I missed you,” Gansey wails into Ronan’s hands, turning them over and placing a very un-boyish and sloppy kiss on each of Ronan’s palms. If he weren’t so _Gansey_ or leaking from the face so profusely, he would almost look like a knight bestowing a kiss upon a fair maiden. And isn’t that a thought. “I missed you so much. You’re---you--- _you are_ \---the most important thing in the world to me. After like, being born. A-and Blue’s like, weird little ears. I guess. They---you just.” 

Gansey tries to suck his snot back up into his nose, unsuccessfully. Ronan laughs again--- _(beautifully)---_ and Gansey’s cheeks begin to imitate summer strawberries before he pulls his shirt over his face, hiding underneath the collar. 

Blue nods in approval from her perch, taking another little puff, and Adam realizes, vaguely, that he wasn’t imagining her holding a cigarette at all. That it was there the whole time. And he watches from another planet entirely as Ronan scoots closer to Gansey and pulls him, still hiding under his own collar, into a strangely intense hug. 

“I know, man. I’m still here. Haha. _Snotty._ ” Ronan’s voice is small but pleased and he pulls Gansey in so he can rest his chin on his head. Gansey leans into the touch, nestling into Ronan’s neck and exhaling so much tension, Adam’s not even sure he’s still alive under there. Ronan looks down at the bundle of boy curled up in his arms, then glances over to Blue, who’s decided to take this moment to catcall all of them with varying degrees of coherence, and then they come to finally rest on Adam. 

_Oh, god._

Adam feels like a fly caught in a spiderweb, watching the spider come. Inevitable. Unavoidable _\---(Beautiful)---_ He can almost imagine what it would be like if a fly could love a spider. If. If---Gansey interrupts his train of thought with an especially unmanly sniff. Adam digs his fingers further into the grass and the dirt, feeling a current move through them. Some invisible electrical current winds up through the muscles in his arms like the vines back in the forest, traveling over the left side of his body, but getting stuck in the right shoulder before it can disperse into the rest of him. Adam’s injury feels like too great of a limitation all of a sudden, the feeling of being uneven and imbalanced overwhelming. He breathes out, shaky, unstable emotionally and physically. 

Two of Adam’s best friends in the whole wide world have been hugging for at least two seconds. And Adam is very proud to have personally witnessed at least one of those seconds. Come to think of it, he is very proud to have witnessed any seconds at all, considering how long seconds have decided to become. He may only be here for another one. And then gone forever, like a boat tipping in the night and sinking forever into the drink, unable to even sound a siren, the last seconds of Adam Parrish’s sad existence stretching out too wide for anyone to come to his aid before it is too late. And whoever watches him now watches the last second they’ll ever have of him.

He has to warn someone. 

Time still feels like it’s moving differently for Adam. He can feel the Earth spinning, see the tilt of the planet in the great disaster spill of the Milky Way. He can feel the radiation oozing off their bodies and bleeding into the hungry grass below. Greedy. Petulant. He looks down at his arms, hands, bare feet and sees the little ridges where goosebumps are forming. 

What a splendid thing it is to be Adam Parrish. 

Noah drapes his long, vine-like arms around Gansey’s neck and hangs his head off Gansey’s shoulder like a dead thing on a thorn, eyes vacant but lips moving. Adam hadn’t noticed anyone had moved, but Blue’s fingers are on Gansey’s pulse points and his forehead is on her shoulder and there’s a piece missing, somehow, even though together they breathe as one. 

Inevitable. 

Adam’s eyes search for the missing piece and find it curled up in the grass a little ways away from the fire. Lonesome. Adam sets off on a journey to collect that missing piece, his good ear catching Noah’s wispy voice speaking too quietly for anyone to hear, but important enough for Cabeswater to relay the words to Adam’s brain.

“Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn,” Noah says.

Gansey turns his ear into Noah’s mouth, which was right next to his ear when he spoke. Noah laughs. “Is that---I don’t know what you just said. What did you say?” Gansey asks, confused and emotional. The presence of death in Noah’s eyes is a constant, but for this moment it seems more like the restful night’s sky and less like an endlessly frightening abyss. He leans in again and says something in English. Maybe the same phrase, maybe not. 

“You will be remembered.” 

Then Adam’s out of ear shot. He stands over Ronan’s body, but the Earth is still spinning. Cabeswater wants him to spin like that, too, but he doesn’t know how. It’s going too fast for him. Adam sits down too hard in the grass and wonders if someday the Earth really will spin too fast. What will happen to him, then? Will he disintegrate? Is he going to just float off into the atmosphere someday and become another piece of trash stuck in the vacuum of space? 

“Why the fuck would that happen?” Ronan asks, having at some point in the last few seconds rolled onto his back. His bright eyes are a stark contrast to the darkness that surrounds them. A warmth in the vacuum of space. Maybe the very axis around which Cabeswater asks him to rotate.

Adam hadn’t intended to answer any questions, having also not intended to say any of it out loud. He takes in the crickets and the crackling wood in the fire for a minute and closes his eyes. But the spinning quickly becomes too much for him and he has to lie down. Adam puts a hand over his ear, but it only gets worse. 

“Nolo.”

Ronan’s breath is on his face, but they’re still far enough away to blame it on the drugs. They’re face to face on their sides in the grass, feet going in opposite directions. Adam can see Ronan’s eyes blinking at him curiously, upside down from his vantage point, and he feels more like a leg of the milky way than a planet rotating around an axis. He feels something shift then, upon realizing that Ronan Lynch would be the other half of the galaxy. Can they be entrusted to this? What lies between them, a secret or a black hole, or maybe both? 

Adam can feel worms and insects burrowing into the ground, burrowing into his skin. If someone cut him open right now, they would all fall out and what was left of his blood would sink into the dirt and there would be a feast for days. Or maybe Cabeswater would just climb inside of him and take shelter. He would become a new vessel. Pieces of himself---his legs, his arms, his identity---are beginning to disassemble and he pulls them all in close, holding tightly to what he can. He’s pretty far gone, he’s pretty sure, but not quite enough to not feel Ronan’s fingers pulling his hand gently away from his ear, not enough to not hear Ronan’s response when it does eventually come. 

“Te coles.”

“Lynch,” Adam says, a strained voice he doesn’t recognize escaping past his lips, too far for him to retrieve them now. 

“Parrish,” Ronan answers, with something that feels like finality.

Adam opens his eyes to an expression he’s sure he’s seen before but doesn’t recognize in the context of Ronan Lynch and lying too close to someone in the grass. He studies it for long enough to remember what it is. And then long enough to remember it’s being pointed at him. And then, finally, long enough to remember what he’d wanted to say. It takes hours. It takes so long the world tries to fill the silence and Adam has to close his eyes again and focus.

“Noli sinere latere me.”

Ronan doesn’t respond. Adam doesn’t know if he has the strength to repeat himself. But then Adam feels the grass move by his ear. A hand comes to rest gently on his arm between them. Ronan’s forehead presses so lightly against his own, he could almost forget it was there. Almost.

“Numquam.”

The energy he feels creeping in from Ronan is nothing like what he feels from Cabeswater. It has everything to do with dreams. Freedom. Ronan’s body curls around Adam’s like a comet caught in orbit. He can almost feel them winding into each other, their atoms fusing together where Ronan’s head connects to his. Like magnets. Or yin and yang, going round and round in circles, never really meeting in the middle, but circling, forever and ever. But there’s a hand on his wrist to keep him from spinning away and dispersing into the atmosphere and he feels himself give way to the weight of another hand on his skin. 

Adam’s heart sinks into something that might be melancholy, his heart returning from the dirt and the bugs and the worms to show him how it aches. He doesn’t want them to be yin and yang. He doesn’t want them to circle each other forever. He doesn’t want to float away gently in the night and become just another name on the list of people who have abandoned Ronan Lynch. He doesn’t want this boy to turn his head and find the space beside him empty when he needs it to not be. A space in which Adam is beginning to think he just might belong. To look for him up in the stars the way he sometimes does with the others. 

Lonesome...

Adam feels like maybe this is really it. Like maybe he’s really beginning to see Ronan for who he is. Or at least, a snapshot of who he was at the precipice, right before things began to change and he became someone else. A bright star on a horizon growing darker and darker, threatening to take that brightness with it. The eye of a storm rather than the storm itself, his old self, a softness kept safe, preserved by the only version of himself he can bear to face in the mirror. 

_Maybe,_ Adam thinks, _just maybe he doesn’t have to bear it alone._ Ronan begins to snore into the grass. Adam closes his eyes and waits for sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Nolo - I don't want to. 
> 
> 2\. Te coles - I'll take care of you.
> 
> ("To cultivate the land" is the literal meaning. It can also mean to protect or nurture as I'm choosing to use for the fic. Figuratively, to worship or honor. As in Exodus 20:5)
> 
> 3\. Noli sinere latere me - Don't let me disappear.
> 
> 4\. Numquam - Never.


	10. Chapter 10

Adam grabs an elbow. 

A heartbeat. A book falls and hits the floor. A faucet turns on. The elbow twists out of his grip and a hard mass of something comes away in Adam's hand, then softens and falls, leaving an ashen residue wherever it lands. 

Adam catches hold of the end of a shirt. 

Little flashes of moments he doesn’t remember living flood his thoughts: breaths fogging the mirror of a bathroom sink, a rapid pulse slowly calming. Two hands share a hymnal, one pale and uncalloused, the other covered in prominent veins and roughened with work and age. Someone banging furiously on a door. Adam loses hold of the fabric. 

A hand seizes Adam’s upper arm, hooking the fingers of another around the back of his neck. Adam’s breath hitches as he feels images leave him through the two points of contact. A Christmas with his parents when he was five years old. Adam’s mother breaking out the record player and his father cracking open a beer can, their eyes both distant. A broken action figure from the clearance section. A low point at one of his jobs. The bottom of Adam’s feet bruised and his joints screaming. The tension in his neck as his supervisor yells at him for someone else’s mistake for the third time that week. His father finding out he’d been out late with Gansey, the sting of a beer bottle colliding with his temple. A face presses into Adam’s neck. 

Adam slides a hand up the back of a shaved head and pulls it closer, feeling breath on his skin. 

Declan bursts through the door to the bathroom in a black suit and finds Ronan in a similar suit but covered in his own hair, his scalp bleeding from a rough shave. Declan shouts. Ronan shouts back and Declan wraps his arms protectively around Ronan, ignoring protests and struggling. Ronan’s face goes red with anger and he hits Declan hard but Declan tightens his grip and holds on. Ronan gives up and collapses in his hold and screams until it turns into crying and they never talk about it again. 

Adam pulls his hand away from Ronan’s head and feels another compacted mass come away in his hand and fall to the floor. Ronan shivers into his neck. More images come and Adam tries to close his eyes to them. He brushes his thumb over a white scar cutting through Ronan’s eyebrow. It rubs away easily, coming off like the rest. Adam watches while the skin knits itself back together and the white line through the eyebrow starts to grow back. 

Ronan pulls back to touch the new tissue with a look of disbelief. They breathe for a moment, Ronan’s hand on his brow and his eyes on Adam. Adam looks back, unapologetic. Ronan’s eyes are determined as he reaches for Adam, fingers brushing a burn mark under his jaw, the scar tissue disintegrating.

Memories and emotions and sensations mix, guided by the touch of careful hands to scars and pain and loss. Ronan finds every piece of Adam visible and soothes it and Adam creeps his hands under Ronan’s shirt, looking for hidden hurts. Ronan brings his mouth to the side of Adam’s head and he feels Ronan’s lips on his deaf ear. Impossibly, he hears the air leave Ronan’s nose when he pulls away. Ronan’s eyes are closed when he comes back into view and Adam is glad for it. He doesn’t know what’s happening on his face and he’s afraid of what Ronan might find there if he sees. 

Adam’s hand finds its way to Ronan’s jaw and his thumb smooths over a cheekbone. Ronan’s face tightens and he covers Adam’s hand with his own. Adam leans in instinctively and Ronan meets him halfway, their foreheads coming together and their noses barely brushing. Adam can hardly tell where he ends and Ronan begins. Ronan starts to shake and Adam breathes deeply, trying to coax him into doing the same. But his jaw tenses underneath Adam’s hand and then he’s gone. 

Adam wakes in the tent breathing hard. He lies still and stares at the ceiling, waiting for his body to reclaim itself from sleep. Ronan rises slowly into a seated position to his left. He isn’t facing Adam, but Adam can see the tension in his spine, his head bowed over his hands. Can see the dust covering his fingers even in the dim moonlight filtering in. Adam rubs his fingers together, feeling the residue on his own fingers. There are so many questions he wants to ask. What just happened? How did it happen? Did Adam just step into one of Ronan’s dreams and if so, _does he know_? 

As Adam’s breath returns to him, Ronan starts to move his fingers, studying them. He doesn’t look back at Adam on the floor of the tent, but Adam can feel the impulse in the air between them. Ronan leans forward over his hands, brings his knuckles together, and his brow lands against them. Adam is reminded of Ronan’s silence at the quarry, how he kissed his hands after prayer. Solemn. Earnest. Full of untold stories and worship. Adam cannot bring himself to look away, but he feels like an intruder in Ronan’s world just as he had before. And yet, here was Adam. His own hands separate but similarly filled with untold stories, sleep retaking him before he can decide whether or not to give them a voice. 


	11. Chapter 11

There are three things to know about Adam Parrish.

  1. He’s always exactly where you’d expect him to be.



Adam proves this wrong at precisely 4:46 AM when he scales a chain link fence next to a sign that clearly states to "KEEP OUT." He’s wearing nothing to protect himself from bumps and scratches besides some gloves he’d thrown in the back of his car because time was of the essence. It was impossible for him to get any sleep after the trip to Cabeswater, the events too disturbing, the silence too sinister. But an idea had still managed to worm its way into his sleep-deprived mind, triggered by a passing thought:

Ronan’s car keys were still in the pocket of his pants he’d left at St. Agnes. 

_It is dark outside,_ Adam thought to himself on the lonely road back to his apartment once they had returned from Cabeswater. _It will be dark for maybe another hour._

And then he turned off on a side road and stepped on the gas pedal.

  1. He doesn’t play favorites.



Adam would prefer not to comment on preference of any kind, among friends or otherwise. Favoritism is a poisonous word that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth in all other walks of life. Perhaps that is the reason he works so hard in school so as not to lean on anyone else for material reasons. Perhaps it might be why Gansey's favor for him causes so many fights between the two of them. Perhaps it could also now be the reason Adam is out with a toolbox in the early morning darkness alone without a witness. And maybe the same actions would in fact be more damning to even himself under the nonnegotiable light of day. If his lack of favoritism is to be challenged in any way, he’d prefer it to be challenged on his terms. Adam pulls a flashlight out of his backpack and goes to work looking for an intact windshield that fits the specifications written on his arm in pen.

Leave it to Niall Lynch to dream up a car with non-standard dimensions.

  1. He never skips class.



Adam figures he’s got about three and a half hours before someone starts to wonder where he is. And at that time, he will have excuses for Gansey. Or whichever teacher decides to email their concern. Or, depending on how much things have changed without his notice, Ronan or Blue or the whole goddamn school district. 

But there’s really no good way to stop himself once he’s decided to do something---and now that he's usually not in any physical danger he has a harder time stopping himself. And besides, the church staff must be pretty close to losing their patience and cleaning up the mess Ronan made of the BMW outside of St. Agnes _their_ way and sending one or both of them the bill.

Adam Parrish is not in the business of analyzing exactly what possesses him to embark on a project such as this, on a school day nonetheless, which is sure to end in tearing out his hair, scratches he won't be able to hide, sighs of frustration, letting out strings of curses with no one there to assist or bear witness---the list could go on.

But Adam Parrish definitely is not in the business of analyzing the project---or his actions, for that matter---within the context of Point #2. 

It’s difficult to hide a BMW. Especially the Lynch BMW. So rather than Adam shamefully rolling the thing in in front of his coworkers, he's opted for calling in a favor and planning to have it towed to the shop himself after hours. Adam’s a good worker and it’s rare that anybody bothers him while he’s got a project unless there’s been a pile-up nearby or he’s already clocked in too many hours that week. That last one always hits him in a soft, bitter little place in his gut. A place he's always surprised still has a pulse, all things considered. 

The trouble is, he gets comfortable. And then something comes along and slaps him in the face and he's reminded of where they all came from. Fighting over scraps, cutting lunch breaks, fighting for overtime, never even coming close to the amount of sleep he needs to get up the next day to show up with his coffee do it all again. Going through the motions of reliability and partnership despite there never being enough of anything to go around. 

This is exactly why Adam has to get the fuck out of Henrietta.

He tries not to think about the questions that might get asked of him as he puts the BMW in neutral and rolls the car away from the wreckage. He tries even harder to not think of the judgment he might find in the eyes of his coworkers once they find out, devouring the evidence of Adam pulling in a favor for one of his friends - an _Aglionby_ boy, at that.

This is why Adam’s got to do most of the work before towing it. He pushes the thoughts away and pops the hood open to assess some of the damage.

 _God,_ he thinks. _As per fucking usual._

Aglionby boys only understand motor vehicles insofar as the machines carrying them from place to place with absolutely no knowledge or maintenance required. Adam remembers a time when a student’s car had broken down and he’d called in a tow and made an appointment. Adam’s coworkers had mercilessly left him the opportunity to explain to Henry Cheng that there was nothing visibly wrong with his vehicle other than the fact that he’d run out of gas. But Adam, damn him, took pity on him and refilled his oil for the trouble.

The shit he’d gotten for that was enough to deal with. But this? This is different. The BMW is different. And pulling in a favor for Ronan fucking Lynch was _definitely_ different. 

Whatever. 

He climbs into the backseat, avoiding the glass from the broken window and the cracked windshield, to look for the lug wrench _\---(does this car even have one? Do the tires even come off?)---_ when he feels something hard under Ronan’s Aglionby jacket in the backseat. Adam removes the jacket and a hand flies to his mouth to stifle a shout.

A long piece of metal lies underneath, covered in that same not-blood-dream-substance Ronan had washed off in his shower days before. Some of it is on the jacket. Some of it rubbed off on Adam's fingers. It might not be real blood, but it sure as hell smells like it. Adam tries hard to breathe, flashes of a life before this forcing their way into his mind. He doesn't know he's shaking until he feels Cabeswater tugging at the base of his neck, a question mark hanging over his head. Adam sits down on the seat next to the mess and stares hard at the roof of the BMW, waiting for his heart rate to return to normal. 

Nobody's hurt. Ronan had a nightmare. He isn't about to hide evidence of assault. 

_So, just like any other day of my life. Get it together._

In the end, Adam knows he can’t leave it in the backseat of the BMW. It’s too much of a risk. So he climbs out of the backseat and wraps the Aglionby jacket back around the bloody piece of metal, running up to his apartment. He'll wash the jacket clean and hide the metal. If Ronan’s ire is awaiting him at the end of this, they can argue about it later. 

Adam tries not to look at the stains on his hands when he puts the keys in the ignition to try to see if it’ll turn over and to his surprise, the BMW rumbles to life.

This directly contradicts Ronan’s story. Adam grins. No tow needed after all---things just keep getting more and more interesting.

Adam gets some tools ready, pulls on some gloves and a pair of goggles over his eyes, and gets to work.

"How's the shoulder?"

Adam stares. It’s only when Ronan appears beside him at his locker, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, earbuds in and eyes fixed straight ahead that Adam notices. Ronan hasn’t appeared beside him in over twenty-four hours. It collides with another realization entirely: 

It was an interruption in the regularly scheduled broadcast. Rotation, axis. Yin, yang. Adam's amazed it took him so long to realize. Although in his defense, a BMW demanded his attention and that will always trump when it comes to regularly scheduled broadcasts. 

"...it's fine," Adam can't help but to smile. "Thank you, for---helping." 

A weight lifts from Adam’s chest when the words are spoken, some of his worries becalmed. Ronan watches it happen, the tension leaving Adam's body out of the corner of his eye. Adam knows he's not subtle. He's never known how to be. The other students hurry to get in and out of their lockers as quickly as possible before scurrying off to their next classes, Adam's own timeline entirely severed from whatever propels them into action. Adam's hand remains on the door of his locker, not opening further, not moving to close. Ronan doesn’t look at Adam when a question bubbles to the surface. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Ronan asks. 

The room goes quiet as Adam’s mind zeroes in on the question. He releases the door to his locker and shoves the textbook he'd been carrying into it, roughly. Maybe too roughly. Ronan raises an eyebrow and turns just slightly to face him, waiting. Adam pulls a jacket out of his locker---the one he'd been up all night hand washing, the one that once hid what appears to be murder weapon no matter what Ronan tries to say about it---and slips his arms through it before turning to face Ronan, to give him a _look_. Ronan stops breathing when he sees his jacket hanging loosely off of Adam's smaller shoulders. 

“Stop what?" Adam pushes before Ronan can do something stupid. Like point it out. "Fighting Declan? Giving Gansey high blood pressure about school or alcohol or speeding tickets? Chewing on those damn bracelets all the time?” Ronan’s face reddens and he spits a leather band out of his mouth and shoves his hands back into his pockets. “Stop---sleeping on my floor every night?” Adam finishes bluntly, finally closing his locker. 

Ronan’s blush reaches his ears and his gaze falls to the floor, his silence all the clarification Adam needs. Adam physically feels the implication that this is something within Ronan’s regularly scheduled broadcasting considered Not To Be Talked About. He nods to his shoelaces.

Interesting.

“No, not particularly,” Adam says, his fingers slipping into the pockets of his jacket---Ronan's jacket. 

“No?” The hope in Ronan’s eyes is almost too bright to look at when they lift to meet Adam’s.

Adam laughs softly and turns. He doesn’t mean to copy Ronan’s body language, but it’s too late by the time he’s leaning against his locker, their shoulders almost brushing. This is evidently not the response Ronan had been expecting. A warmer stillness falls over both of them, unwitnessed and safe against the now abandoned lockers to their backs. 

“No,” he repeats, giving in to it, giving in to Ronan. “But I _am_ curious to hear how or if you plan to come and get your car from me without anyone finding out where you’ve been.” 

Ronan groans and tosses his head back against the number on the door with no small amount of frustration and winces as subtly as he can manage at the impact. He brings his wrist up to his mouth, unconsciously resuming the abuse of his bracelets. Ronan crosses his other arm over his chest to secure his elbow in place above it, a shield more than anything. 

“Gansey’s up my ass about this shit already,” Ronan says, leather between his teeth. “I’ll just call for a tow tonight.”

Then, after another moment, he adds, “---Sorry.” 

Adam doesn’t like apologies. He likes apologies from Ronan Lynch even less. And right now, Ronan looks like somebody slapped his hand at the dinner table. Nobody, not even God, gets to put a goddamn leash on Ronan Lynch. “Last I checked, you had nothing to be sorry for,” Adam says before he can stop himself. “And we all love Gansey, but this isn’t about him.”

Ronan exhales something that sounds like defeat and pushes off from the locker. He looks ready to disappear for another twenty-four hours, his eyes moving towards a target down the hall. Adam can’t let that happen. 

“Lynch,” Adam warns. There’s a wall rising between them and Ronan takes a step towards his exit, but Adam reaches out and catches hold of him just above the elbow. Ronan’s eyes dart down to the point of contact, a confused recognition in them Adam knew he’d see. 

When Ronan looks back at him, Adam knows intimately what his eyes are telling him: _don’t you walk away from me_. 

But when Adam’s holding the power, he’s not sure how to use it. Tell Ronan that Gansey can go fuck himself? Ronan already knows that. Tell him he wants him to come back? That he can’t sleep without him? He has questions? Concerns? That they should _talk?_ Ronan would run like hell. 

Adam ditches the pretense. He ditches the fact that he’s currently late to his next class. He ditches all of it. Adam knows this is the only chance he’ll get. Adam tugs on Ronan’s arm. He goes easy, bottom lip trembling, tension slowly melting out of his shoulders to coil into his fingers as a pair of car keys are pressed into his palm. Ronan’s fingers wind around Adam’s, curious. Adam reaches up to run his fingers through the short hairs on the back of Ronan's neck, pulling his head down like he's about to hug him. 

“I lied, dipshit... your car’s in the parking lot,” Adam whispers, directly into Ronan’s ear. Then he pulls away, relishing the image of Ronan Lynch, leaning down to listen, eyes closed. “See you tonight, asshole.” 

Ronan stays where Adam put him, frozen in place. The hand Adam had pressed the keys into hovers where he’d left it, head dipped and body curled in accommodation for the shape of Adam’s. For a moment, Adam’s momentum keeps him there and it feels like they’re suspended on the edge of a knife. It's not time to lean into that yet, though. And pulling further away from Ronan instead of leaning back into him feels like pulling off a coat in a snowstorm. And then Adam withdraws and starts off in the direction of his next class. 

“Lynch?” Adam says, careless, only a pace or two away.

Ronan’s mouth seems to struggle with the shape of his name as his jaw moves his head vaguely in Adam’s direction. It’s taking him longer than usual to recover from the effect of having someone else momentarily caught within his orbit. 

“Parrish?” he returns. Like it’s normal. Like they do this all the time. 

The balance of whatever’s happening must be very carefully coordinated, even if Adam isn’t entirely sure what that is yet. If he gets pulled into Ronan’s gravity a moment too soon, he’ll do more than fall. He’ll crash. Adam breathes in the distance he’s fought so hard for and tucks a long strand of hair behind his ear before continuing. Ronan's eyes follow the path of his fingers around the shell of his ear, then the strands that escape and fall over Adam's eyes. 

“Maybe bring a pillow or something if you’re sleeping on the floor.”


	12. Chapter 12

“Damn, this is a mess.” Ronan gestures to the broken glass still covering the parking lot where the windshield of his BMW had met its maker. Adam’s eyes narrow.

“What do I look like, a cleaning lady? Go get a broom and make yourself useful,” he says. 

Ronan’s mouth widens into that reptilian grin that gets just under Adam’s skin as Ronan turns and jogs inside the building. Adam reminds himself to breathe. He’s just a boy. They’re both just boys. But now they’re both just boys on the precipice of something _more_. Adam can feel it. He’s just not sure yet if the fall will prove hazardous. 

They spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning up glass and avoiding idle chit-chat. It makes Adam anxious to talk about nothing and Ronan never has anything to say, but Adam can tell something lies in wait just outside their comfortable silence. He’s too focused on it to relax, like an itch he can’t quite locate as he sweeps around Ronan’s feet that he almost doesn’t hear a question when it's asked. 

“Come again?” Adam asks, nothing if not polite. 

“I said, _are you hungry?_ ” Ronan shoots back.

Adam ignores the tone, a bone-deep exhaustion sinking into his chest. 

“Yeah, I guess. I’ve got some shit in the fridge if you’re dying.” Ronan wrinkles his nose. 

“I was kinda thinkin’ burgers.” He sniffs the air like a dog. “Like. Ya know. Junk food. Fries? Maybe a...milk...shake?” Adam rolls his eyes, but Ronan pushes on, fearless. “Pointless fuckin’ fun?” 

“Stop that,” Adam snaps.

“Stawp whuh?” Ronan asks in some sad excuse for a southern drawl, all raised eyebrows and innocence.

“That.” 

“Yer gunna half t’be mawr spuhssifick.” Ronan leans on his own broom like it’s a pitchfork and does his best Virginia hick impression. Which. To be fair. _Is_ pretty damn good. Adam considers throwing his broom at him like a spear. Ronan clears his throat and spits nastily, narrowly missing the toe of Adam's left shoe. 

“Burgers,” says Adam tightly, “sound _fine._ ” 

“Wull awllratt theyun...” Ronan pretends to chew tobacco while he speaks, rendering the the sentence incomprehensible. Adam shivers, unsure if he’s horrified or enthralled. He doesn't bother to open his mouth and remind Ronan which of them grew up on a farm in rural Virginia. He does, however, bother to open his mouth and spit out some minor offense on his way over to the dustpan they've both been neglecting. 

When Ronan says nothing, Adam's mind replays the sound of his own voice and he stops. He turns. The look on Ronan’s face is priceless. Adam’s accent rarely comes out, but when it does, it comes out with a vengeance. 

“Now _that’s_ what I’m talking about.” Ronan’s grin can only be described as wolfish. Adam's eyebrow twitches. 

In the end, Adam wins the argument over who drives, but Ronan insists they take the BMW. Adam stalls it once on the way there, having not driven a stick shift since the _last_ time he was forced to climb into the driver’s seat. Ronan’s still spouting some shit about _making love_ to the gearshift rather than fucking it into the asphalt when they pull up to Burger Shack. He’s still probably audible over the intercom when the woman inside very concernedly asks for their order. 

Ronan leans over Adam to talk to the woman. “Hi, Darla,” says Ronan courteously, his elbow digging painfully into Adam’s stomach. “I’ll have my regular and our little captain of the peewee soccer team over here will have #6.”

If looks could kill, Adam would permanently end this torment. Ronan waits. 

A cough comes from the intercom and the woman very conscientiously asks if they would rather order something from the kid’s menu. Ronan’s silent, open-mouthed laughter is hot on Adam’s face when Adam shoves him away, his cheeks going pink.

“No, that’s okay," Adam’s smile is thinner than paper. “I’m actually the oldest person in this car.” 

Whatever the hell Ronan had ordered him luckily just looks like a normal burger. There’s something poking into his thigh -- maybe the seat belt buckle, maybe a pencil in his pocket, maybe the cheap fabric of his jeans -- but he’s too hungry to care.

“Gotta say, if I’d known you were just gonna eat in my car, I would have pushed to go inside.” Ronan spits it out through pickles and fake cheese, mystery meat escaping with his words. 

“Aw, Ronan..." Adam's voice is like honey, poised for attack. He lets the accent breathe. "If I'd known you wanted to take me in somewhere and sit me down, I would've dressed for the occasion."

Ronan glares at his food and Adam takes advantage of the moment to steal a french fry and turn off the air conditioner. 

"God, it's freezing in here. Maybe we should have gone in..." Adam trails off, when Ronan sends him a mildly concerned look. 

"You're cold right now?" 

Adam stares at the sweat gathering at Ronan's hairline, confused, shivering. Ronan stares at the goosebumps collecting on his bare arms. Ronan reaches back into the car and pulls a blanket off the floor, tossing it carelessly over both Adam and the food in his lap. 

“Actually...” Adam ventures after a brief struggle with the blanket. He can see Ronan’s shoulders tensing before he’s even finished speaking. “I found something in the backseat. Do you---uh." Ronan lowers his food, appetite lost. Maybe he knew this was coming, maybe he didn’t. Adam Parrish has never been wonderful at letting people just get away with things. 

“I don’t care,” he says to the window, voice tight, "what you do with it."

“Okay…” Adam breathes, becoming uneasy. 

“Well,” Adam lowers his voice. “I scrubbed someone’s blood out of the backseat of your car, so. I figured we should maybe _talk..._ about _that_...”

“What do you want me to say?” Ronan doesn't sound annoyed or angry, maybe just exhausted. Defensive. Adam sighs. He can see Ronan’s fear in the mirror by the window and he realizes not for the first time that he’s way out of his depth with this. What was he thinking? That they were past the point where Ronan needed to hide those parts of himself to feel safe? That enough had happened between them that he could just ask questions and expect to just be rewarded with answers?

 _Foolish._ Adam thinks. _I’m such a fool._

“Look,” Ronan starts, gentler. Adam looks up, having not realized his gaze had dropped to his lap, and almost bumps into Ronan's nose. “You can throw it in the trash. You can drop it in the ocean. You can keep it as a fucking souvenir.” Ronan takes a shaky breath and closes his eyes before finishing. “But I don’t ever want to see it again.” 

Adam wishes he knew if they were close enough to freely put a hand somewhere on Ronan simply for comfort. A leg. A shoulder. The back of the neck. Anywhere that might easily communicate care. But he’s too scared of getting shrugged off or slapped or worse. 

“Okay...” Adam starts the car. “Okay.” He hopes it conveys everything he wants to convey. 

Ronan doesn’t say anything for the rest of the ride back to St. Agnes and Adam can’t help but feel awful about it. He wouldn’t blame Ronan if he jumped right into the driver's seat and headed back to Monmouth Manufacturing. But all he does when they pull into the newly pristine parking lot is pop the trunk and take out and overnight bag. Adam tries not to stare as he follows him up the steps. He ignores the butterflies that collect in his stomach when Ronan opens the door for him, Ronan's hand just barely brushing the small of his back to guide him into his apartment before following and letting it swing shut on both of them. Private. Adam holds his breath once they're past the threshold. Somehow cleaning a parking lot is different than spending premeditated time together and alone behind closed doors.

“Here,” Adam hears. Ronan offers a bundle of fresh smelling clothing, any sign of Ronan's dark mood gone. There’s a well-known implication of returning borrowed clothing that Adam tries to ignore as he takes them from Ronan’s outstretched hand. 

“Thanks,” he says. 

“Don’t thank me yet,” Ronan responds, the mischief of that implication haunting his face. “Noah did unthinkable things to them.”

Adam laughs, both amused and horrified. Ronan grins and it does something to his eyes. Things are back to normal.

Except for all the ways in which they're not. 

Adam turns physically away from the thought and from Ronan, digging through a drawer to find the shirt Ronan had carelessly discarded the last time he'd been to the apartment. A piece of paper falls out and he doesn’t register what it is before it's too late. Ronan, maybe attempting to be casually helpful for the first time in his life walks the two steps to the dresser to lean down and pick it up. He looks. He freezes. Adam turns as he rises, hovering for maybe a second too long before offering it to Adam, eyes unreadable.

Adam wants to die. 

"It's not done yet." Adam doesn't look away as he takes the drawing from Ronan. Something ignites between them, a burning in Ronan's eyes Adam's never seen so nakedly directed at him. He can see how carefully Ronan chooses his next words.

"Don't let me stop you from finishing."

Adam huffs tosses the shirt at him, which he’d neatly folded because he’s a fucking civilized member of society. The drawing of Ronan’s tattoo is quickly rehidden in a more secure location while the shirt is stuffed into the overnight bag.

Adam hurriedly takes a book off of his shelf and stuffs it into Ronan's overnight bag. Ronan raises an eyebrow.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

Adam laughs, a little nervous. Not nervous enough, apparently. He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear and smiles. 

“Well, I was thinking you might _read_ it...” Ronan’s face screams betrayal, injustice, _how dare you_ when he reaches down to investigate Adam's copy of _The Catcher in the Rye._ “Just give it a chance?”

Adam isn’t really asking. He heads to the mattress, opens his backpack, and pulls out his books and his notebook. Ronan rolls his eyes, but turns to the first page and sits down next to the bed, his back against the wall. 

Adam blows warm breath over his cold fingers until Ronan grabs the one not holding a pencil and holds it. It's freezing.

"Jesus..."

They don’t talk about it. 


	13. Chapter 13

At first, there’s nothing. A night with no moon to light his way. But there are sounds; faint and unhurried breaths that come and go. He moves toward them, floorboards creaking beneath his feet. There’s a board missing and he stubs his toe, a dull pain that sharpens as the light grows. A dim but determined glow creeps in over the window sill closest and finds him. Adam pushes open the door to a dark room, that same moonlight illuminating the edges of everything. 

A man and a woman sleep on opposite sides of a bed extravagant in size but not design. Adam’s perspective fades into the background as he feels the ghost of a child step out of him. What remains watches from the opposite wall, as something not entirely here nor there. The small boy clambers onto the sheets, ducking under the covers at the foot of the bed and crawling between the man and the wall.

The man and the boy look so similar it would be ridiculous to ask if they were related. The same eyebrows, the same clever curl of the lip, same odd angles and long dark hair. The boy watches his father breathe and tries to match their breaths, but quickly becomes restless. He breathes open mouthed onto the man’s face and nothing happens. He sings a short verse of a surprisingly sweet song. Again, nothing happens. He lightly pokes the tip of the man’s nose. Then, the small dip of his upper lip. An earlobe. A brow that’s beginning to furrow… it carries on like this until the man’s eyes are fully open and his face is full of love and mirth and frustration all at once. 

_Ah_. Something inside Adam’s heart says. _This is the man that taught him how to do it._

“What are you doing up?” comes a sleep-hoarse, deeper version of Ronan’s voice. 

“You _promised…_ ” comes the response. The laughter it provokes is warm and harsh and devolves into something fierce and protective as he watches his son laugh too. These eyes have experienced love. These eyes have experienced loss. These eyes have done wonderful and terrible things in the name of both. 

“I guess I did, didn’t I?” he confirms, exhaling a quiet and more comforting rumble of laughter this time. 

The man climbs out of the bed as quietly as he can so as not to wake the woman still sleeping on the other side of the bed. He lifts the boy off the bed and carries him down the stairs to the kitchen. Adam sees the man make himself a coffee, pour it into a thermos at his son’s insistence, and then they make their way outside. 

Stars light their way as the man lifts the boy onto a ladder and follows him up to the roof of a barn. Adam follows, the ladder shaking as he climbs. They walk the length of the roof in silence, the boy watching his feet, the man just tired, and Adam an unseen intruder a few paces behind. Finally agreeing on a good spot, the two sit and turn their eyes on the horizon. 

_They’re waiting for the sun to rise,_ Adam realizes. A longing that feels like dying carries him to join them a few feet higher up the slant of the rooftop. 

“Daddy?” the boy asks, shivering. The man takes off his coat and places it around the boy’s shoulders before answering. Adam knows the name before the man says it. 

“Ronan?” 

“I’m eight now.” Eight-year-old Ronan sounds very proud of this revelation. Too proud for an eight-year-old to be, certainly. But then, Adam has no idea how proud eight-year-olds are when they’re allowed to be. The man -- Niall Lynch -- pulls up his sleeve to peer down at a watch on his left wrist. 

“Technically, I’d say you’ve got about thirteen minutes left of being seven.” 

“Dad, come on,” Ronan says, stubborn. “I’m _eight._ ” 

Ronan’s father grins fondly. “Okay, okay,” he concedes. “You’re eight.” If it were possible for Ronan to look more proud of himself than he already does, that’s what happens when Niall gives in. “Are you going to tell me why it’s so important that you turn eight?” Ronan doesn’t even hesitate. 

“I’m an adult now. So I can drink coffee now.” Niall’s booming laughter probably wakes the chickens - or cows - or whatever else has been sleeping peacefully beneath this roof until now. 

“Oh, is that how it is, then?” Nial’s voice is rich with mirth. “You drag me out here at four in the morning so your mother doesn’t find out I let you drink this sewer water?” Ronan’s face goes red and he smacks his father’s arm with all the strength of a boy soon-to-be eight. 

“No!” he shouts. “No, no, no!” Niall just laughs again, but drags his angry, snake-like son into a bear hug. 

“It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone. Go ahead, you’re gonna fuckin’ hate it.” If Ronan was a snake, then surely Niall was a dragon. Ronan snatches the thermos from the hand his father holds out to him, unscrews the lid, and takes a big gulp. The whole world pauses. From the pained look on his face, Adam can see he’s made a miscalculation and sure enough, the liquid goes right back into the thermos. 

“Told you.” He says nothing about the backwash, Adam’s face scrunching in disgust as Niall takes a sip for himself and nods approvingly. Good to know Ronan’s lack of shame in regards to saliva is an inherited trait. 

“Actually,” Ronan begins. “It’s not about coffee.” Ronan’s father gives him a dry, disapproving look. The first disapproving look Adam’s seen from him and Ronan quickly backtracks. “I didn’t lie! I _am_ old enough to drink coffee. Even if - even if it tastes like _dog shit--”_

 _“_ Ronan--” Niall tries, but Ronan continues as if he hadn’t said anything. 

“--I’m still old enough to drink it! And. And if I’m old enough to drink coffee, then maybe I’m old enough to come with you when you leave.” A hiss of air escapes Niall’s pursed lips and he looks away from his son. Birds start to chirp. There’s a sun and some of its colors peaking over a silo on the dark horizon. It’s beautiful. Or it would be. Ronan hugs his knees into his chest and stares out at it, outward petulance hiding a poignant, visceral disappointment. 

Niall’s watch beeps at him and he comes back to himself. “Hey,” he prods gently. “You’re eight.” When Ronan doesn’t say anything back, his father puts an arm around him and pulls him closer. 

The wind picks up around Adam and he shivers, rubbing his hands up and down his arms to try to warm them. It doesn’t work. The roof beneath him suddenly feels less cold and hard. The slant of it is also beginning to even out. Instead of the horizon, he’s staring out a window. The wind begins to howl. It can’t be that loud. Adam’s sure it can’t be that loud because if it’s that loud, then-- 

“Ronan, get out of bed!” a voice yells, fists pounding on the door of the room. Adam’s standing at the foot of a bed. Ronan’s bed. He can’t be a day over ten. Adam can still taste the anxiety and the despair from the rooftop as Ronan pulls his pillow over his head to block out the noise. “Ronan, this is not a joke, open the fucking door!” 

Something comes loose in the door and a younger Declan Lynch bursts through, an old looking door knob in his left hand. He drops it and drags the covers off his brother’s bed and Ronan curls around himself in sweatpants and a shirt three times his size. Declan gets his arms under Ronan’s body and Adam is surprised at his strength when he swings Ronan’s body off the bed. Ronan kicks, hits, and screams like an animal as Declan runs them both out into the hallway and makes a careful descent down the long staircase. 

A window shatters above them and Declan ducks, but keeps going. Matthew starts sobbing into a stuffed animal at the foot of the stairs. Adam wishes he could run ahead, help Matthew, do literally anything but follow, but the dream is Ronan’s and it’s impossible to break perspective. Once they’re at the bottom, Matthew latches himself to Declan’s leg and Declan has to move slower. The roaring wind outside is uncontrollable and all consuming, but he still slows down for Matthew. 

Ronan, who had just moments before been trying to inflict bodily harm, is hiding his face in Declan’s neck and gripping his shirt as tight as he can. Declan has to stop at the door to the basement. “Ronan,” he shouts over the noise. “I’m going to put you down now.” Ronan violently shakes his head as Declan carefully lowers him to the floor. 

He forces Ronan away from him and Ronan’s terror is something electric, reactive, mixing with the very air around them. “Ronan, I need you to take Matthew to the basement.” Ronan and Matthew both begin to cry huge, heaving, ugly sobs as Declan throws the door open and places Matthew’s hand in Ronan’s. “ _Do not let go of him!”_ Declan yells, hands gripping the sides of Ronan’s head. “I _will_ be down there once I find Mom.” 

Small feet fly down the stairs, Ronan trips and cuts his eyebrow open on a stair before he catches himself. He still hasn’t let go of Matthew’s hand and Matthew pulls him under the stairs and they curl up in the corner and wait. Footsteps thunder down the stairs after them less than a minute later and then there are arms around the both of them, pulling them in close just like Niall had on the roof. 

“Where’s Mom?” Matthew wails into Declan’s shoulder. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “I couldn’t find her.” Matthew cries harder and Declan pulls them both closer. 

“Where’s Dad?” Ronan asks, sounding almost smaller than Matthew had. 

“ _FUCK DAD.”_ A door bursts open to reveal a bright sky and a roaring wind and the brothers Lynch scream in unmanly and undisguised terror. 

Adam feels the dream twist and unmake and fracture, bleeding into another. Cheap carpet knits itself over the unfinished cement of the basement. A statue of a woman, Mary, leans over Adam. 

_Still the nations curse the darkness,_ _  
_ _Still the rich oppress the poor._

She looks down at him as he looks up at her and a single tear of blood drips onto his face. He flinches and then he’s staring at a line of pews, people dressed in black, a casket, the brothers Lynch standing in their pew, Declan and Ronan at a distance from one another. 

_Still the earth is bruised and broken_ _  
_ _By the ones who still want more._

Hymnals in hand, Declan and Matthew sharing one while Ronan holds his own with his right hand. His hand shakes and his voice stutters and goes silent, everyone else around him continuing to softly sing that same sweet little tune he’d been singing to his father in a previous dream. 

_Come and wake us from our sleeping,_ _  
_ _So our hearts cannot ignore_

Adam watches Ronan’s face crumble, watches the weight of the hymnal become too heavy, watches it fall. He sees Ronan retreating back as he throws open the doors and races out of the service as the congregation continues to sing as if nothing was happening. 

_All your people lost and broken,_ _  
_ _All your children at our door._

Adam feels his feet move toward the hymnal on the ground. He bends down to pick up the book, but it bursts into flame in his hand. Then he’s staring up at the statue of Mary once again, her lifeless eyes dripping blood. Adam convulses on the ground and there are faces of children above him, concern clear and wide in their wild eyes. 

Adam’s eyes tear open and the shaking stops. The rest of him takes time to catch up. His body feels strange and disoriented and bruised in the way Adam imagines it might feel to be lifted from the fiery remains of an automobile collision. 

Something is very different about this new perspective. He waits, listens, hesitates. 

_Cabeswater?_

The forest sometimes pulls him sideways into a vision or pushes him forward into delightful or disturbing encounters. Sometimes he can feel a pulse that doesn’t belong to him beating rapidly in the palms of his hands when he comes close enough to a ley line. Sometimes he can feel one of Persephone’s cards calling out to him from his pocket or his bag. Sometimes he looks in the mirror and doesn’t recognize himself, a mole or a freckle out of place, like Cabestwater took him apart to study and carefully reassembled him while he wasn’t paying attention. Sometimes it’s his proportions, like his jawbone appearing sharper, or his face, his arms, his neck becoming longer - things that might be normal if he didn’t belong to Cabeswater, if he were only a boy coming of age. Sometimes he looks in the mirror and sees nothing at all. 

Adam moves his fingers, wriggles his toes, tries to ground himself into alertness. Sensations slowly filter into his awareness. They come in the sound of water, the smell of damp earth, and the unforgiving push of something hard along the line of his back. It’s not particularly comfortable. A boat? Adam thinks with interest. I’m in a boat. Adam is aware, now that some of the disorientation has worn off, that most of his front is very snugly pressed up against something warm and breathing. And then he is aware of what that means: that he’s not alone. 

He’s not sure where he is or what his purpose is, but the river is taking them somewhere and he won't find out if he panics and tips them both into the water. Adam begins to unfold himself as slowly and carefully as possible. Once he’s got a hand under himself and he’s certain they’re not about to capsize, he pushes himself up to see who he’s with. He and Ronan Lynch are drifting peacefully along a river in a boat built for one, passing by grass as tall as bushes and cattails the size of trees. Cattails and grass that seem to be growing larger and larger the further downstream they drift, dwarfing the ones before them in size. Adam feels like a mouse floating in a tin can. 

If this is a message from Cabeswater, this serene world around them could twist with very little warning. Easy to tread on and crush underfoot if he isn’t paying attention. Like a half-formed idea. Adam closes his eyes. He can almost feel tension building in the atmosphere, despite the calm of the river and the slow, rocking drifting movements of the boat. Something is watching, protective. Maybe the river itself. Adam’s eyes rest on the water. He softens his focus.

 _I know you’re there,_ Adam thinks.

One hand creeps to his pocket where he normally keeps a small knife. But the tension retreats, and the world begins to shift. The wind settles. The shuf-shuf-shuf rustling of the enormous cattails quiets. Water evens out beneath them. The birdsong, frogs, and rustling of the grass swell a little. Even the sun seems to shine brighter. Something was very intrigued by his silent address. Where before he felt tension, he now feels something otherworldly and laughing in its place. 

Ronan stirs beside him, his knee sliding innocently along Adam’s inner thigh. He mumbles something in an unfamiliar language, but Adam keeps his eyes on the water, distrustful. If this were Cabeswater, it should have made itself known to him by now. The boat rocks gently as Ronan’s limbs reach for Adam in his sleep. Like branches to sunlight or birds to the sky. Reacting to his presence like everything else in this strange world. Ronan’s face smooths itself back out once he’s wound his arms around Adam’s middle, relaxing further when his head slowly comes to rest in Adam’s lap, face pressing into his stomach as if to hide. 

_Am I still dreaming?_ he asks the river.

The river does not respond. Sometimes, when Cabeswater brings Adam a dream, his brain will store it as he would an old memory, only recalling the highlights later. But he’s normally not aware that they are happening. And the more aware Adam becomes, the more unsettled he is. He doesn’t know what this place wants from him, and yet, he can feel the want in the air all around him. Something protective coils deep in the pit of his stomach and he folds himself over Ronan, eyes never leaving the smooth surface of the water. 

The boat is approaching land, as lazily and smoothly as it had been a moment before. He knows this place. The quarry. Adam cautiously relaxes as the boat hits the white stone shore. The world is still while the air is full of the chatter of birds and insects and wind. A dichotomy in the atmosphere signaling to Adam that he is being watched. The cacophony of the birdsong and the frogs is deafening. An emotion is being flung at him, but he can’t put a finger on what it is beyond _loud._

“---Parrish?” 

Adam feels more than hears the question, Ronan’s face still buried in his shirt. Adam leans down to speak to him. 

“It’s me. You’re safe. I’m gonna find a way to get us out of here.” 

Ronan slowly unwinds his arms from around Adam and brings his face out of Adam’s shirt. Adam can sense his confusion.

“Why... wouldn’t I be safe?”

Adam just looks at him. 

“I think someone’s watching us.”

“Oh," Ronan sighs back at him, sounding bored. "What else is new?" 

Without another word, Ronan hauls himself out of the boat and onto the sand, his feet bare. Adam is interested to note they are both still wearing the clothes they fell asleep in, a t-shirt and socks and jeans for himself; for Ronan, a pair of ripped jeans and a fraying black hoodie that he purposely burned holes into at some point. 

Adam watches Ronan rise to his full height. He looks, in Adam’s opinion, like a creature standing before an open gate for the first time in its life. About to break into a dead run, still unsure of which direction in which to carry its feet. 

Adam's no longer sure whether this is Cabeswater trying to relay a message or if he’s just dreaming. 

It looks like a dream. It behaves like a dream. So for now, Adam decides... he’s dreaming.

This will just be another addition to an ever-growing list of things that have changed since he offered himself as sacrifice to Cabeswater. 

_I will be your eyes_ … 

Adam stares into his reflection in the water and shivers when something slithers underneath his skin. It would make sense. Adam rolls up his jeans and jumps in. 

Everything goes quiet. 

Adam is frozen. His feet have sunk beneath the soft top layer of pebbles and the water comes halfway up his shins. Something is buzzing beneath his feet, steadily climbing into a dull rumble, almost like thunder. Adam wants to wade deeper into the water like last time, but he’s completely unable to move, staring at where his feet disturbed the water. Completely unblemished, not even the ghost of a wave to show something broke the surface. Something in the eyes of his reflection staring back has him transfixed, inching closer to him, promising him answers, promising him safety, promising him… 

Adam has no idea how long he’s been there before two forearms appear in his vision, before they grab him around his chest and pull him roughly out of the water. He doesn’t struggle or fight back. All the fight has gone from him, leaving the shell of something limp and vaguely Adam-shaped in its absence. Adam can barely hear someone’s shouts as his head hits the rocky shore. He tries to focus on Ronan, but his eyes aren’t cooperating. Somewhere he knows he should be panicking, but all of that is so far away.

He sees everything. The fear in Ronan’s eyes. The crack of lightning over them in the sky. The whole history of this place lining up to be felt and seen and heard. Adam tries to hold onto them as they pass him by---children lost and alone wading into water, all of them sinking down, down, down---while one watches, horrified from the shore. The white stones that Adam can feel on his back. The water on his face where Ronan’s hands, still shouting---pleading---have moved in his attempt to get Adam's eyes to focus. But it's all Adam can do to keep his eyes on the little boy. There's something about him. Something in the eyes, maybe. His tangled, unkempt hair wild as his eyes. 

Adam is one of those children, he realizes, and the picture flips around and Ronan is on the sand, watching in horror as Adam’s body sinks lower and lower. He can feel the stones give way beneath his heels and then his ankles and shins and knees. He can still hear Ronan’s cries, but now all he can see is the boy on the bank, his eyes wide and fearful, and Adam tries to get his body to move in that direction. He tries to focus on the sand on his back, the warmth of the sun on his face, the press of a thumb on his cheekbone, Ronan's face pressing against his own in a way he feels he should recognize. Pleading whispers reaching his ear. All of it. Any of it.

One foot lifts out of the sludge. Adam chokes out a laugh and barely registers he’s coughing on Ronan's face. Another foot raises as he inches closer to the shore. He doesn’t remember wandering out this far. He keeps his eyes on the boy on the shore, whose eyes have begun to fill with hope instead of terror, tears filling them to fall in relief, taking with them their dread. Something slithers against his feet and he trips, but he’s close enough to shore that small hands hurry to catch him and try to drag him out of the water. Something lifts his body up, more hands, some at his back, his knees, his calves. 

_The children._

Adam looks down to see muddy fingers pulling and pushing him to shore and he falls forward and coughs water into the little boy’s face, sees him recoil. The boy lets go of him and a dizzying spin throws him onto his back and he’s in his room at St. Agnes and the little boy becomes Ronan above him, eyes huge and still hovering, hands almost crushing the sides of his face. His hands are shaking. 

Adam’s hands fly up to meet them and he tugs Ronan’s away before his body lurches forward to cough up more water. Something flies out onto the mattress with it, black and covered in blood. 

“The boy--” Adam gasps out, trying to catch his breath and instead letting out another string of wet coughs. Ronan’s arms reach out to secure Adam’s shoulders so he doesn’t fall into the puddle on the mattress, Adam’s own climbing to Ronan’s elbows as an anchor.

They sit there for a few minutes, the only sounds their breaths coming and going, for the time it takes his lungs to clear. It's difficult not to notice the chilled silence. There aren't enough answers in the world for the questions filling Adam's mind now. Rushing in and out again, one after the other, like the children running past him in their race to get to the water. 

Adam, not trusting his voice to be loud enough, reaches one hand forward and curls a fist into Ronan's hoodie just below his ribs. Ronan's hand folds over it, fingers still shaking. His jaw is tight and his eyes are wide in that same terror Adam had seen in them from the water. 

“The boy,” Adam coughs. “Where is the boy?”

Ronan hesitates when his eyes find Adam’s. 

“You’re looking at him."


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The poem is from a Howard Nemerov poem called "The Blue Swallows"

_ “Seven blue swallows divide the air _

_ In shapes invisible and evanescent, _

_ Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s _

_ Or memory’s power to keep them there.” _

_ I was thinking about all my seven little swallows when we ran into one another. Uncanny, almost, if you think about it. Then again, I’m not very thoughtful by magical standards. But I’m going to be honest with you because I think we might be birds of a feather.  _

_ Something was lost to the forest and I’m trying to find where it’s gone before it flickers out for good. Spirits will sometimes come and find me---(Noah, for example?)---but by then it’s normally too late for me to do any good. I think one appeared to me earlier than usual during your brief visit to my little red house.  _

_ Keep a close eye out and burn this if someone goes missing.  _

_ It was wonderful to meet you, little girl blue--- _

_ Give your mother my love.  _

Blue turns the letter over, searching through the bag of herbs for something to burn, but there’s nothing. Winifred must be referring to the letter itself. Persephone appears over her shoulder, spector-like and morose and smelling of lemon myrtle. It’s one of  _ those  _ days. The ones where Persephone often reads over old letters and lights mugwort for herself and shuts the door to her room for hours, regardless of whether there’s anything scheduled or not. 

“What have you got there that smells of pomegranate?” She wonders aloud in her wisp of a voice. 

When Blue turns to respond, she’s surprised at the brightness in her eyes despite her otherwise bedraggled appearance. It’s one of  _ those  _ days, after all. 

“I made a friend,” Blue confesses, caught off-guard. “In Cabeswater.” 

Persephone reaches for the letter, bracelets clinking together over her wrist. Her sharp eyes scan the paper, holding it delicately like it might disintegrate in her hands. Her eyebrows draw together in concentration. 

Quick as lightning, Persephone rips the paper in half and Blue gasps, startled. 

“Hey, that was---!” 

Blue stops speaking when four tiny seeds fall into Persephone’s waiting palm. Her eyes darken and she drops the letter, cradling the seeds and disappearing, ghost-like back to her room. 

Blue bends down to retrieve the paper, confused and upset, before disappearing back to her bedroom to avoid her mother and Calla’s wrath. 


	15. Chapter 15

Ronan desperately doesn’t want to talk about it. If he tries to, he might shut his mouth and never open it again for fear of losing the one person who’s beginning to make existence bearable. Adam, the boy with the bike Ronan was sure was going to fall apart before someone convinced him to get a car. Adam, who sacrificed himself to Cabeswater and acts like it’s not the most terrifying thing to have ever happened to Ronan Lynch. Adam, who now knows he’s been taking midnight walks in Ronan’s subconscious after the two of them close their eyes. Adam _fucking_ Parrish who passed out moments after Ronan’s confession, leaving no time for either of them to find any answers. Adam, the reason the air itself now feels different than it did before.

What is left for Ronan to do but to walk out of Adam’s apartment in search of more?

The drive to the Barns is quiet. With all the windows down in his father’s black BMW, it almost feels like he’s in one of those old passenger planes. The ones where the cockpit opens and exposes its inhabitants to the air as it flies by. Or maybe those are just a product of romantic fiction like everything else Ronan’s grown to love and lose and believe in. Regardless, that’s what it feels like to Ronan. Windows down, wind blowing in his ears, nothing but his thoughts and the stars to keep him company. If stars were wishes, he’d have collected enough of them to create his own galaxy. But most stars and wishes never see the light of day---which is sort of the whole problem with waking up every morning wishing for more. 

Once Ronan pulls into his old driveway, he waits. For what, he’s never sure. Maybe for it to feel like it used to, maybe for him to feel less like a thief in the night. Ronan knows he’s been a trespasser on the Barns for so long he no longer knows how to belong. But facts like those don’t make themselves easy to accept. He sighs and goes looking for evidence he isn’t a monster. He doesn’t find it, but he does find proof that any of this is happening. It’s easier to believe in impossible things if you have the pictures to prove their existence.

Ronan’s secrets about Adam are starting to outnumber all his other secrets.

There’s a storm coming. Adam always forgets until it hits that he absolutely adores the sound of rain. Adam sits at a table with a red steaming mug of cocoa and an old quilt wrapped around his shoulders. Wind chimes on the front of the house collide gently and ring out their notes. Simple. Happy. Eager to repeat the same few notes they’ve always had. Never changing, never adding or subtracting. Forever remaining the same. Adam shivers and there are careful hands behind him in an instant to place the blanket more firmly around his shoulders. When she speaks, Winifred’s Latin is almost too easily spoken. The kind of clarity people fight to try to recreate for years. The kind most people only hear in their head when reading words on a page.

“You’ll get used to it,” Winifred exhales, her words warm with that impossible clarity. At her words, an unbearable sadness settles into them both. The emotion grows sharper the more aware Adam becomes of his surroundings.

“Your grammar isn't as bad as Ronan’s,” Adam whispers into the mug, warming his fingers around the shelter of chocolate, cream, and sugar. There's something else in the cup, but he can't place it. Something earthy, amber. When he cups his hands around a hot drink, he almost cherishes the cold that accompanies the privilege of clinging to such an easy source of warmth. He sighs, content as the heat travels from his hands to his wrists and up to his elbows. “Why is that, exactly?” Adam wonders aloud. It’s a good question. Especially considering that the rest of Cabeswater seems to follow Ronan’s rules. Especially after the pause in conversation after his first statement.

Winifred is leaning on her hand in a way that’s both familiar and strange to Adam. He can't put an age to her, but she seemed older the last time he saw her. Logically Adam knows he’s never sat at this woman’s table, least of all shared a warm drink in her presence. But he feels it to be so. He feels a shared history somewhere deep in his bones.

“I have lived here for all of my days and for all of my darkness..." As Winifred speaks, her eyes go grey and distant like smoke dispersing from a choked fire. "I've lost track of the time. These things happen when dealing with death." 

"Death?" Adam can't help but to ask. Her voice is like honey, sweet as the warm drink in his hands. "Is that what you do here?" 

She turns amber eyes on him, blinking curiously. 

"Isn't that what we all do everywhere?" 

Adam thinks about it, taking another sip from his mug. He wants to agree with her, but something tells him that not everybody _does_ it like Winifred. 

“What is your connection to Cabeswater?” Adam tries instead.

Winifred doesn’t answer him. Her eyes are filled with kindness, youth, age, white stones. Adam blinks and it's gone. 

"I collect the souls of the dead and provide safe passage." 

Ronan digs through old files in his parents’ cabinet in the kitchen until he finds what he’s looking for. Once, a lifetime ago, Ronan woke with a photograph in his hands. Black and white instead of color, but then, no one can expect perfection from a seven-year-old. And where his dreams fail, his memory serves. The house in the photograph, depicted as a gray half-built monstrosity behind a woman banging away at the wood of the porch with a hammer and nails, was painted a vibrant red.

Ronan told his father about the photograph. The photograph was taken from him and hidden by his father, no arguments taken, instilling a fear in Ronan from that day forward that would outlive the man that put it there. He was not to go to the Red House. He was not to show anyone the things he could take out of his dreams. Ronan was never to speak of any of this again.

The second photograph is something Ronan’s never parted with. He used to keep it tucked away under a floorboard in his bedroom. Once his father died, it moved to his room at Monmouth. What Ronan’s learned over the course of several secret encounters is that the Red House isn’t always there. Sometimes he’s too early and sometimes too late. Some parts of Cabeswater change with time and some don’t. Sometimes he peeks out from behind a tree to see a family sitting together playing cards through the window. Winifred and her seven lost boys. In Ronan’s memories they all look so happy, so at peace. Surely Ronan can’t have hurt them so deeply as he was made to believe.

When he pulls into Monmouth, Ronan’s eyelids are beginning to droop. Gansey’s been waiting up for him. He looks like he means business, sitting on the steps all alone in the dark. Gansey is unabashedly staring. Ronan knows he’s made a recent habit out of crossing too many of Gansey’s lines, disappearing this much with no indication of where he’s been going.

“Are you ever going to tell me what’s going on?”

Ronan doesn’t catch the first bit of the question. Gansey didn’t wait to start asking until he was out of the car. He leaves it on, not even pretending to carry an intention of staying the rest of the night.

“You should come inside with me,” Ronan deflects. “You look exhausted.” But Gansey shakes his head, wrapping his arms around his middle.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

It’s not that it doesn’t affect Ronan to see him like this. Gansey was his first real friend and their friendship has moved into something beyond that. Family, really. It’s just that Ronan isn’t wonderful with _family_ at the moment. At the end of the day, the last thing he wants to do is hurt Gansey. So that’s all he ends up doing. And then he feels terrible and like nothing will ever be the same. People change. Life goes on. Rinse and repeat. He doesn’t like it, it’s just the way things are. But Ronan says none of this.

“Well, I’m sorry about you, then,” he says instead. “Can I get you anything? Some coffee? Melatonin? Turn myself into another fucking Declan to keep you company at night?” Gansey sighs.

Ronan can almost pinpoint the moment where all of his resolve caves in and turns to dust.

“I don’t want your brother, Ronan. I want _you_. I want to know how to fix things with my best friend.”

Gansey’s voice is quiet and dangerous in the way that it always is before he’s about to let himself give in to a breakdown. That’s what Gansey always does. He keeps his shit together until he can’t anymore and then it all explodes in his face.

“There’s nothing to fix,” Ronan exhales, letting the truth of it carry him down to sit next to Gansey. “I just. Need to figure some stuff out on my own this time, I guess.” Gansey’s forehead dips and his lips smush together like he’s trying not to look like he’s experiencing any emotions at all.

“I’m just scared. It scares me to think of all the terrible things that might be happening when I don't know where you go at night.”

Ronan throws an arm around Gansey’s shoulders and pulls him into a one-armed hug. “Nothing's gonna happen to me. I'm okay, Gansey...” Ronan laughs through his words.

It’s weird, but he can feel that’s what Gansey needs to see. Gansey pushes his head under Ronan’s chin and forces him to stay there with him for a little while longer. 

“I hope that’s true.” Gansey says into his neck, his voice falling low like they’re sharing some kind of secret. “These days it’s like Adam knows you better than I do.”

Ronan tries to continue breathing. There’s no reason Gansey would know anything. Ronan’s phone goes off in his pocket. He pulls it out without thinking. Adam’s number, clear as day:

_Come back._

Ronan freezes. 

Gansey stares at the notification, his expression unreadable. 

“I’ve gotta go,” Ronan says, keeping his voice neutral.

Ronan disentangles himself from Gansey and goes off in search of the photograph. Once he finds it, he walks back out the way he came, trying not to let his panic show, but Gansey’s not where he left him. He looks up in time to see a light turn off inside the apartment. Well, shit.

Ronan feels himself running out of time. He can't do everything, but he can feel bad about all of it.

He hopes he finds the time and the words to make this up to him someday. Ronan pulls his phone out to shoot Gansey a text. Probably the fifth time he’s bothered since his father died. 

_I’m sorry._

He gets back into his car and tears off in the direction of St. Agnes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woof. Sorry this took so damn long to get here. We found out my cat is deathly sick and I've been kind of managing that as well as the state of the world. 
> 
> Hope y'all are good and you enjoy this little chapter. 
> 
> <3


	16. Chapter 16

Ronan races the empty road back to St. Agnes. He passes a car or two in the darkness that quickly merges into another lane when he’s on them. He doesn’t bother to take his foot off the accelerator. These streets know him. Know the BMW. They know it won’t slow down for them. A million and one thoughts fly in and out of his head, each more frightening than the last. Adam is angry. Adam is scared. Adam is hurt. _His father found out._ Ronan’s foot meets the floor of the cabin and Ronan can almost feel the air around the BMW ripping itself in two to get him through it faster. 

  
  


Adam sits in the quiet of his apartment. For once alone but unafraid. Something changed between the time he closed his eyes and reopened them to see Ronan’s fear-filled face lurking over him in bed. Even the air he breathes feels different, clearer. He feels the truth of it all around him, clutched tightly in his fingers holding the pencil and the now finished sketch of the beautiful, horrifying imagery that dances over Ronan’s skin. The closer and closer Adam came to finishing, the closer he came to revealing a secret he hadn’t considered: Ronan was never hiding his scars. He just... turned them into something he thought was easier to look at. Adam still doesn’t know what it means to Ronan. He maybe never will. They might not have time for that. 

Adam sucks in a breath of air that turns to ice in his lungs and wraps his worn-thin blanket tighter around his shoulders and thinks of Winifred, wishing he could have carried his mug of hot cocoa out of Cabeswater with him. It isn’t uncommon that Cabeswater takes him places when he dreams, but it’s usually showing him what it wants when it does. The trees speak to him and guide him to where he’s needed. This was not like that. Cabeswater hasn't asked him for anything, just hovered around the edges of his vision like it's waiting for something to happen. 

Adam had closed his eyes in his apartment and opened them in a grassy clearing filled with birdsong, without a single clue where he was. The air was warm around him, but it couldn’t reach his skin. So Adam had searched, barefoot and shivering for shelter, until he’d found the Red House and collapsed in the yard. Winifred had come running out to him, holding a blanket, as though she’d been waiting for him. Perhaps she had been. 

While Adam lay shivering in the grass, Winifred reached up to brush his hair out of his face. Her fingers were freezing. 

“W-what is this?” he spat out through chattering teeth. 

“You will know soon enough.” Her words were warm where her skin was not. Together, the two of them managed to get Adam to his feet and drag his stiff body carefully into the house where Winifred sat him by the fire. She disappeared into the kitchen to heat some milk for their drinks and some water for a warm cloth she would later place on the back of his neck.

Some time later, after she’d sat down and wrapped a larger blanket around Adam’s still shivering body and placed a steaming mug of hot cocoa in front of him on the table, she got out a book. 

Winifred flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for and then turned it upside down and slid it across the table for Adam to see. It was a photo album. The picture she’d chosen showed the smiling faces of seven boys celebrating a birthday. Adam recognized the table they were sitting around as the one where he currently sat himself. Adam also recognized the boys. 

“But...” he said. “I don’t understand.” Adam’s breathing was beginning to pick up again and Winifred rose from her seat across the table to come behind him and rub soothing circles into his back. Adam couldn’t remember ever having been treated quite this gently by an adult. “I watched it happen. I was there.” 

Winifred continued to rub soothing circles. When Adam’s breath began to slow, she spoke. 

“They all came from the woods. All my boys.” Her voice was rich with affection that sounded ready to spill out of her. “Their feet like ice, tears like hail.”

Adam heard it start to overflow. 

“What happened to them?” he asked. He needed to know. 

Winifred smiled a brave, brave smile. And then she told him. 

  
  


Ronan doesn’t park the car. He pulls into the lot and rips the keys out of the ignition and runs, taking the stairs two at a time. He jerks the door open to reveal Adam sitting on the mattress in the corner. Waiting for him. 

“Jesus...” Ronan bites out, breathing heavily, but the anger dies on his tongue and turns into relief. “I fucking hate cell phones.” Adam has the decency not to laugh, even though he does allow a bit of a grin to show on his face. Ronan, bent over and breathing hard in his doorway. Ronan, who thought something terrible had happened to Adam. Ronan, who really has no right to be angry with him for being cryptic about anything ever again. 

“Didn’t mean to scare you.” Adam sounds tired. He is. Ronan’s gaze drops to Adam’s hands just like it always does. Except this time, there’s something else there to look at. All the air leaves Ronan’s lungs when he recognizes what it is. Him---his tattoo, at least. He feels strangely hollow at the sight of it. Then Adam’s holding it out, offering it for him to take. Like it’s just that easy. Like it’s allowed to be. 

Ronan sits on the bed. He knows he shouldn’t make a habit of it. There are lines he can’t cross unless he’s sure he’ll survive being on the other side of them. But his legs feel weak and the lighting in Adam’s apartment is shit. Adam starts to rearrange himself so they’re not as far apart. Ronan gives him a look. Adam gives Ronan a look, then takes his seat barely a breath away. Slowly and methodically, like he’s approaching a frightened animal. Ronan hates what that says about the both of them, but he’s too caught in the moment to say anything. His tongue never cooperates when Adam is close. 

“I don’t think I got the dimensions right,” Adam whispers from Ronan’s left, practically into his ear, and a shiver goes up Ronan’s spine. “But I’m no artist.” Their arms bump against one another when Adam raises a hand to scratch at the opposite shoulder. The two of them study the finger shading and the smudges of the penciled lines of Ronan’s tattoo. Ronan has to disagree. The wild thing that lives in Ronan Lynch’s heart normally wants to throw things. Fight with Declan or shout at strangers or drive into a telephone pole. Rip himself back violently from the edge of a deep and familiar drop to his ruin that this fire he feels for Adam keeps driving him toward. To eat alive any of the hope that Adam’s been feeding him recently. But now the thing that lives in Ronan Lynch’s heart has gone quiet. 

“I’ve never seen it all in one place before,” Ronan admits carefully, running a thumb lightly over one of the angry scars intertwined with a tree branch. He’s never seen those up close either. The truth of it settles over them with a finality that feels like death. How many glances, how much patience it must have taken to do this. To learn the lines of Ronan’s hurt. Like his pain is something deserving of that kind of study. Like _he’s_ worthy of something like that. He tries not to feel the burning in his eyes. “You _did_ scare me.” 

“That one’s my favorite,” Adam tells him through a yawn, scooting just an inch closer to point to the little lamb inside an egg that hides a bump on his back where he’d broken a rib and punctured a lung. Ronan feels a hand settle cautiously on his forearm. “It feels... different than the rest somehow.”

Adam looks exhausted. He’s just seemed more and more exhausted lately and Ronan doesn’t know what the hell to do about it. He jerks his head to the side. To hide. To keep from dripping all over the paper in his hands. Ronan feels a hand on the side of his face pull him back and the other return to wipe away his tears. He ignores Adam’s whispered questions. 

When a wrist comes close enough, Ronan catches it just below the bone and brings it to his mouth. Presses a kiss over a vein and a smudge of graphite and a tear that escaped Adam’s care. He hears the hiss of air that leaves Adam’s lips in surprise and tries not to lose his nerve as he plants another kiss just above the last one. Then another. And another. Another. And then one more into Adam’s palm. Adam’s pulse is faster than his own as they lean in to bring their foreheads together. Something Ronan hadn’t planned to make a habit of, but could feel the impulse for every time Adam was near. 

A flash of the trip to Cabeswater and the smell of dirt and grass and cool night air floods his memory. He chances a glance up to see Adam’s eyes have fallen closed and lets his own follow suit. Adam’s wrist is still in his hand. He brushes a thumb idly over his pulse point. Adam’s nose touches his own ever so softly. Ronan can barely feel their breaths coming and going. He wants to lean in. He doesn’t. He doesn’t know what he wants. Maybe Adam does. They’re so close that Ronan doesn’t know where he ends and Adam begins. Before any of his faculties return to him, one of them leans in that last inch and lightly presses their lips to the other’s.

Ronan stops breathing. 

At that exact moment, a car alarm goes off in the St. Agnes parking lot. 

They break apart, Ronan pulling way back like he’s been burned and Adam turning swiftly to the window, breathing hard. The line of his body is full of tight, exposed tension where a moment ago he’d been so soft Ronan almost hadn’t felt him there. Almost. Ronan runs his hands down his legs and briefly considers bolting for the door. Never speaking of this again. Living in the woods for the rest of his life. The car alarm stops. Adam turns back, having come to the conclusion it’s neither of their cars, and laughs out loud at what he sees. 

“What?” Ronan asks, offended. 

“Nothing, just,” Adam laughs again. Ronan goes to stand but Adam catches him by the knee and he almost trips. “You look like you’re about to run like hell _.”_

Ronan sits back down and refuses to make eye contact. Adam runs a hand over the short hairs by Ronan’s ear, traveling to the back of his head and resting there. 

“Hey...” Adam’s voice has dropped so low Ronan can hardly hear him. Ronan lets out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold. Ronan inhales again and reaches for Adam’s knee. Adam comes closer, eyes wide and unafraid. Ronan’s not sure he’s ever seen anything so brave in his life. He wants to bottle it and keep it with him always to remind himself it's real. This moment happened. Whatever happens next, he was here. Adam sneaks a hand over Ronan’s on his knee and grips it tight, letting out a shaky breath. All of Ronan’s defenses crumble like sand. The curiosity in Adam’s eyes shines like the sun when he lifts Ronan’s hand to bring it to his chest. Ronan pushes further, just a little, so he can feel Adam’s heartbeat. Ronan lets out a shaky laugh and feels Adam melt against his hand. 

“Certus es?” Ronan whispers. Adam brings the hand higher, guiding it to rest half on his neck and half on his jaw. His eyes are expectant, staring into Ronan’s own, that curiosity burning brighter now than ever. 

“Et tu?” he returns, barely audible. 

Ronan pulls Adam in and kisses him again, hard. Hard enough to knock him off balance. Hard enough to justify wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him closer. Adam opens his mouth and Ronan feels all of his sense fly out the window. He wants to follow it through head-first and pray for a quick death, knowing he'll never live through anything like this again. He wants to hold him down and rip all the pieces of Adam Parrish apart just so he can learn how to them all back together again. He wants to---Adam pulls back to breathe and he falls back onto the bed, pulling Ronan down with him and Ronan doesn't know if he wants to breathe ever again. Breathing feels better now, different. Every inhalation like that first gulp of air after too long spent underwater. But any time at all spent not kissing Adam Parrish for the rest of his life is time he has no interest in.

Adam's breathing evens out and he pulls Ronan down by the front of his shirt, tilting his head back to press their lips together again. Softly. _Sweetly._ Ronan laughs once into his mouth, overjoyed, before it quickly turns into a sob.

Adam moves to look at him when he feels it, but Ronan’s arms creep under Adam’s back on the bed and he folds into him, hiding.

He never thought they’d get here. And now that they are, it’s too much to handle. When he recovers just a little, Ronan pulls back and holds Adam’s face in his hands.

“Come with me.” 

Adam’s eyes are fierce below him. Unreadable. _Protective,_ Ronan realizes, and he'll never be able to uncover what exactly he did to deserve this. 

“Where?” 

Ronan kisses Adam. Adam lets himself be kissed. 

“Te concessum rogo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Latin: 
> 
> Certus es? -- Are you sure?
> 
> Et Tu? -- Are you?
> 
> Te concessum rogo. -- Please.


	17. Chapter 17

As far as Gansey can tell, it goes like this: 

Sometime between the hour of midnight and his early morning classes, Richard Campbell Gansey III received a text from Ronan Lynch that read the following: 

_I’m sorry._

Richard Campbell Gansey III was feeling jealous, slighted, or maybe just seventeen in the face of _whatever the hell_ was going on between Ronan and their mutual friend Adam Parrish. Gansey can’t remember the last time he experienced a temper tantrum and actually had the balls to act upon it. When they would occur in his youth, the most he’d get out of the ordeal would be mild concern on his parents' part, immense frustration on his own, and the open possibility of a new toy, subject to change depending on how long his behavior continued. In that context, perhaps just this once, being seventeen overrode any concern that might have otherwise registered somewhere in the back of his mind. Gansey was tired. And lonely. And, most of all, _seventeen,_ as Blue Sargent would later insist whenever he brought it up. 

24 hours passed. 

It was Monday. Gansey forgot to brush his teeth before leaving for school. He’d recovered from his temper tantrum mostly unscathed, but had refused to respond to Ronan’s text. Upon arriving at Aglionby for his early morning classes, Gansey’s resolve was beginning to eat itself for breakfast. By the time he walked out of his first class, he was intent on finding one or both of his friends and demanding some kind of explanation --- both for their behavior and for that cryptic text---but was unable to do so, as neither of them had shown up for any of their classes. At first, Gansey was simply annoyed at Ronan’s usual absence. But by the time Latin rolled around and neither Adam Parrish nor Ronan Lynch were occupying their seats, Richard Campbell Gansey III was trying to ignore the first few notes of a sharp, unsettling panic. Even if it was normal for Ronan Lynch to skip class, Adam Parrish’s absence felt insidious. 

Lunch came and went. Adam didn’t pick up his phone. 

Gansey left school and drove to Adam’s place of work in search of more answers. Adam’s supervisor was baffled. Not once in all of Adam’s time there had this happened. The man asked Gansey if there were any reason he should be concerned, not meaning to be the final nail in the coffin of Gansey’s hope that everything was going to turn out alright, but doing so nonetheless. 

Something had happened while Gansey slept peacefully through the remainder of the night at Monmouth Manufacturing. 

Ronan Lynch had left a late night apology lingering without an explanation attached. Adam Parrish had gone missing. The pieces were falling into place. 

Gansey’s phone rang before he could answer the man’s harmless, well-meaning question. He waited to answer until he had stepped back into his car and closed the door. 

_“Gansey?”_ Blue’s voice was small and frightened in his ear. 

“I’m here,” he told her. 

_“Gansey,”_ Blue repeated. “ _Ronan’s brother, the older one I think? He's in our living room.”_ Blue’s voice was, impossibly, smaller and more frightened than it had been a moment before. 

“What?” Gansey had heard her. But there was too much information accumulating in his mind before she spoke for him to register the words that came after it. He wanted to step back through time. To stop Ronan from leaving Monmouth Manufacturing. To force himself to say goodnight. To drop his cell phone in a blender so he never had the choice to ignore Ronan’s apology. To never have to hear Blue Sargent sound like that in his ear. Blue sighed into his ear, not unkindly.

 _“Declan is here.”_ She sounded like she’d been crying. _“He wants to talk to you.“_  
  
  
  
  


Pale light shines through the passenger side window. Adam’s legs have the rare privilege to stretch out in Ronan’s car, so that’s what they do. Adam feels his knees pop as he moves, begins to stir. He opens his eyes slowly, with great effort. The heat is on in the car even though he can see sweat drip from Ronan’s forehead. Adam, on the other hand, is cold. He pushes up from the car seat and feels his back crack in vertebrae he didn’t know he had. Ronan whistles at the noise. At some point after Adam fell asleep, Ronan must have pulled over to put the seat down for him. At that time, he must have also placed a jacket over Adam’s chest to keep him warm despite the heat. Ronan, whose right hand is resting on his thigh, his other hand only the vague suggestion of a grip on the steering wheel. Adam’s tired eyes drink in Ronan’s fingers spread comfortably over his leg. He smiles with his teeth for no one but himself and slides his hand over Ronan’s. Feels the skin, veins, bones. _Shivers._

“How long have I been out?” Adam asks through a yawn. His mouth feels like cotton. He feels the joints in Ronan's hand soften under his hold. 

“About fifteen hours, give or take,” Ronan tells him softly, squeezing his thigh. Adam grips his hand tighter, trying to hold on through the electricity that travels up his spine. 

“Must’ve needed it… I’m… so tired still...for some reason or other.”

The words come out slow, slower than it had taken for him to open his eyes. Ronan’s jaw tenses and his eyes narrow at the open road ahead of him. 

“Coffee?” he asks. Adam briefly reclaims his arm to aid in pulling the car seat back up to a seated position. Ronan’s fingers tap restlessly on the stick shift until Adam’s settled and they reach for one another again. Adam brings his knees into his chest and pulls the jacket---Ronan’s jacket---over them to encourage them to at least attempt to soak up some warmth. He kicks his shoes off, too, but thinks better of his socks. 

“I think---yes...” Adam decides after he’s settled, overwhelmed. _Distracted._

Adam smiles to himself as he picks up the gas station coffee from beside him with his free hand and takes a drink. Terrible. Unpalatable. Truly, truly wretched.

 _Just_ the way he likes it. 

“Ronan Lynch, how do you know how I take my coffee?” 

Ronan says nothing, just laces his fingers through Adam’s and lifts his hand to press a small but intent kiss into his knuckles. 

“My God,” Adam laughs, not knowing what he’s responding to. Ronan Lynch knowing his coffee order, the shock of another boy’s lips on his skin, Ronan himself… Adam feels himself turning that same toothy grin from earlier toward Ronan. “What a gentleman,” he teases. Laughs again. “Who are you and what have you done with that other Lynch boy---the one who---goes and runs off on me all the goddamn time?” Ronan’s cheeks turn rosy, face breaking into a bright little smirk, his eyes never leaving the road. Some of the tension subsides. "Well," Adam clears his throat. "Let me know if you find him, I guess. How much further?”

Ronan’s hand inches up his thigh, ignoring the questions. 

“Not far.” Ronan’s eyes are playful and his voice is gentle with Adam, even though Adam can see the knuckles of his left hand turn white over the steering wheel.


	18. Chapter 18

A pair of sad, sad eyes watch him intently---each iris the color of a rose. Birdsong dances its way to Adam’s good ear from outside the window. Sometimes he tricks himself and he can almost, almost hear out of the other if he knows he’s asleep. The memory of Ronan’s lips pulling away, the sound of his breath hot against Adam’s neck tricking him in this place of impossibility and dreams. He blinks, returning to the present moment, the edges of his vision growing fuzzy and dark. Those sad eyes blink, golden then amber. Ever-changing. A hand reaches across the table to take the cup he’s been drinking from before it tips out of his weakening grasp and falls to the floor. 

“Sorry…” Adam mumbles, confused, disoriented. 

“Don't be.” Winifred’s smile is grief-stricken, but strong. She's speaking in English today instead of Latin. "I don't know everything there is to know.” 

“You can tell me… the truth,” Adam tries to sound assertive, but hears the slur in his words. His tongue is going numb. _“I’m so tired.”_

“I know.” Winifred's whispering now. She runs a hand through her hair and Adam can barely keep his eyes focused, her features blurring. "Hold on, just a bit longer." 

“How long do I have?” 

Winifred gives him a winning smile, though he can see the effort it takes to do so. 

“Don't worry about that. There's been some kind of mistake... this isn't your story." 

Adam feels his head loll and his mind slip away before she finishes her sentence. Losing consciousness has begun to feel like forgetting to hold onto the end of a balloon string to Adam. He can only watch, helpless as it escapes limp fingers.

Someone else reaches out and catches the tail end of the balloon string before it’s gone completely. A new voice whispers to him now, a word spreads unhurried over his last moments of consciousness.

_...Dad?_

Declan Lynch is talking heatedly with Maura, Calla, and Persephone behind a rare and terrifying closed door within 300 Fox Way. Maura is speaking calmly, each word chosen carefully, too quiet for Blue to make out any complete phrases. Calla, on the other hand, returns Declan’s ire with vigor. Had Blue not witnessed Persephone enter, she wouldn’t even know she was there just from a hopeful ear to the door. Declan is, frustratingly, succeeding at keeping his voice down, but Blue can just barely make out bits and pieces of Calla’s.

“... _know_ if we’d seen something like that?” Her tone is condescending. Maura says something to keep the peace, her words spaced out to drive home meaning, but Calla cuts her off when she begins again.

“How should we know… _careful_ with these…” 

Blue grits her teeth. She wants to pound a fist on the door and demand they include her. It hadn’t been Calla or Maura’s decision to keep her out of the room. She wasn’t even given words of comfort, just an order to make a phone call. All of which only makes her want to storm in and demand _Declan_ be kept outside while _she_ commune secretly. Which is irrational. And petulant. And _entirely_ called-for and within her nature, whatever her mother has to say. 

Blue hears a knock at the front door. She runs. 

The door is unlocked, open before she gets to it. She reaches up at the same time Gansey reaches down and they collide in a rib-crushing hug. It isn’t enough. She pulls back to see his face and backs up into Noah’s chest. Noah drearily lifts his arms to drape them around Blue’s shoulders and sighs into her, leaning his smudgy cheek on the top of her head. She hugs what she can reach of him and he droops over her like a tree branch too weak to bear its heavy fruit. 

“Where’s Adam?” she asks, not at all wanting to know the answer. 

Gansey’s mouth does something foul. Noah sinks further into his perch on Blue’s shoulders. 

“He doesn’t know.” Noah whispers, and the cold breath on the back of Blue’s neck sends a shiver up to her ears. The door opens to the study. Calla’s face is hard, her knuckles white on the doorknob. 

“All of you, get in here,” she says, voice quiet but controlled. “ _Now._ ”

  
  
  
Adam slips back into awareness and feels his body already moving on its own. He panics and stops, almost tripping in the process. An exhaustion that’s slowly been worsening over time slips back in as well, finding its place just between his shoulder blades. Adam feels something strange on the bottom of his feet and looks down. A dark, ugly substance that feels very much like blood but bears a striking resemblance to the liquid left over from a well-used watercolor bowl is what he finds painting the floor. Two sets of footprints. One his own, one leading from the front door to a closed door about ten feet in front of him. 

Ronan’s voice, almost too quiet to be heard. Adam hears crying and he’s moving before he fully knows where his feet are taking him. The door opens to a kitchen cupboard, the light from the kitchen shining in to reveal what can only be Ronan, mostly hidden under the bottom shelf, just a knee sticking out. 

Adam stands with his hand on the door and Ronan doesn’t appear to even know he’s even opened it.

That’s when Adam knows this isn’t a dream. 

He feels something shift, feels his body sway, like he stood up too suddenly. And then something hits him from behind and he falls. 

  
  
  
  


“What do you know about my brother?” Declan’s voice is a thin sheet of ice over rough waters.

Gansey and Blue glance at each other. Noah looks down at his hands. The three of them are piled practically on top of one another on the small couch next to the work phone. Persephone is cross-legged on the floor, shuffling and reshuffling a deck of cards Blue doesn’t recognize. Maura is leaning forward over the couch, the tips of her fingers brushing the top of Blue’s shoulder. Calla is in the chair next to the couch, facing Declan, who’s barely managing to stay seated, tapping his fingers rhythmically on the arm of the wooden fold-out chair usually kept in the corner of the room for guests with bad knees. All three of the women’s eyes are observing Declan Lynch with an uncomfortable intensity. 

Blue speaks first. 

“Is this about how he pulls shit out of his dreams?” 

Maura squeezes her shoulder from behind for the language and Blue swats her away. Declan snorts and looks away from them. He looks so much like Ronan when he does it makes Blue’s chest ache.

“Unfortunately not,” Declan says, clearing his throat. “What else?” 

There’s a brief, confused silence. 

“What---like. Like, _besides_ that?” Gansey asks, confused. 

A terrible silence has fallen over the room as Blue and Gansey struggle to find an answer to Declan’s question. When they are unable to, he moves on to Noah. 

“Well?” Declan asks, cold. “What about you?” 

“...nothing…” Noah says quietly, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. 

“Noah,” Gansey interrupts, concerned. “Are you alright?” 

“...fine…” comes Noah’s whispered response. Something falls from his face and lands in his lap. Noah slowly lifts his sleeve to the spot and it comes away red. Calla sucks in a breath when she sees it and all focus moves to Noah. 

“Wait,” Declan says, leaning down to get a better look. “What is that--- _Jesus---"_ Declan spits, ripping his body out of the chair. In the spot where there’s normally an almost charming little smudge on Noah’s cheekbone, something else has taken its place. Rapidly decaying muscle tissue hangs by a thread over splintered bone, dripping blood. Calla rushes out of the room while Maura and Persephone flock to Noah’s side and there’s a brief frenzy as Blue and Gansey pull them back to give Noah space. 

“Sorry… head wounds bleed a lot…” Noah apologizes vaguely, his eyes blinking unevenly at the ceiling as he pushes both wrists to the spot in an attempt to keep fluid from spilling all over the couch. Declan counts to three, breathes, doesn’t succeed in formulating a response. 

Calla returns and pushes through Gansey and Blue’s attempts to pull her back, dropping to her knees in front of Noah with a towel from the bathroom. 

“Thank you,” Noah tells her a bit weakly. “I promise it won’t stain. It’s not. It’s---just---it’s not actually here---Declan asked if I---” Noah disappears entirely for half a second and then reappears on a different part of the couch, clutching his stomach. The veins around the wound have turned black. He makes brief eye contact with Declan. Declan makes a strange sound in the back of his throat and then bolts out of the room, Gansey hot on his heels. Noah watches them leave with concern and then lurches forward and vomits into the towel. “I’m not---sure I’m gonna be able to say it…” Noah whispers shakily into the mess. 

Calla places her hands on either side of Noah’s knees on the couch, sighs, and turns her gaze on Maura. 

“Could you guys give us some space?” 

Maura opens her mouth like she’s about to argue, but snaps it shut again. Persephone puts a hand on Maura’s shoulder and steps in. 

“We’ll be in the kitchen.” When she speaks, she speaks like air through a feather. Almost as if she’d spoken from thousands of miles away. 

  
  
  
  
  


Snowflakes tickle Adam’s face as he slowly comes back to himself. His muscles are sore and heavy. They fight him when he pushes off the ground, disturbing a light dusting of snow that fell on him while he was unconscious. The sky is dark, the heavy snow drowning out any recognizable horizon or landmark. He tries to stand, but his legs give out halfway and he crashes back into the frozen earth. Adam’s fingernails dig painfully into rigid dirt when he tries to catch himself and is startled when he feels… nothing. 

He breathes. 

_Cabeswater---_ he reaches out.

Cabeswater, normally a permanent and welcome intruder in the back of his mind, is gone. He turns his head one way. The other. His heart races. Adam’s not used to feeling alone. 

Something hits the ground behind him and he forces his body to turn enough to see what it is. 

He breathes. 

He wrenches his head over his shoulder and wills the rest of him to follow, summoning just enough effort to sit up, to look in the direction of the impact. Something small and covered in dark feathers pokes out of an indent in the snow about a yard away from his feet. Something else hits the ground. Again. Another. 

Adam drops forward and covers his head with his arms. Something hits his back, painfully, then slides off and goes still. 

_He_ _breathes._

A door slams loud somewhere back in the house and now Adam is the boy in the cupboard. Someone’s running, their breaths quickening and footsteps gaining speed. Adam feels his own breaths pick up, feels his hand clamp down over his mouth. The runner slows, comes to a stop, follows the dark, ink-like footprints leading to the cupboard. Adam can hear Declan’s sigh from several feet away, Ronan’s name exhaled like a prayer. He feels a tear roll down his cheek. Adam recoils from an unfamiliar, monstrous emotion that sinks its teeth into his heart when he hears it. Hate. Resentment. Embarrassment. _Smother._

Adam feels the control slipping and uses it to pull the hand away from his mouth. 

“Ronan,” he says, a ghost speaking through another boy’s lips. “What happens next?” 

Adam feels fear. He can feel how badly Ronan doesn’t want to be here when Declan finds him, cowering in a cupboard covered in death. The ugly, demeaning emotion is still present and it makes Adam want to throw himself in between the door and Declan, to keep him away from Ronan. His fingers itch to reach out and just throttle the owner of that voice. Adam knows it isn’t his own and tries to take comfort in that. He vaguely wonders if this moment is where that impulse was born in Ronan. Then stops that line of thought before it gets out of hand. 

Ronan’s eyes close without Adam’s permission and his body curls up on the floor and goes still. Some sinister, horrible feeling leaks into Adam’s chest. 

“What is it?” he whispers through the footsteps and the pounding in Ronan’s chest. “Show me.” 

The wall of the cupboard disappears just as the door swings open and light bursts in on Ronan curled into a ball on the floor.

Adam’s body is his again, though he can feel the remnants of nightwash on his fingers. The deserted arctic around him is covered in dead animals. Evidence of some invisible toxin --- or ritual animal sacrifice on a truly chilling scale. Adam rolls his shoulders back and dead things fall off on either side. He opens his eyes. He sees it. And feels it. And then he knows. 

_Grief._

Adam picks up a frozen rabbit covered in icy flakes of blood. No entrance wound. No breaks at all in its stiff fur. Not even a joint out of place. Eyes glassy and fearful in death. 

He presses it into his chest, unsure of how to help aside from offering what little warmth he has left, as Cabeswater’s advice and presence is painfully absent. Adam presses it into his chest tighter, closer, until it’s too close and it hurts and he knows there’s nothing he can do. He feels the tears before they come. He feels lost, alone, too young to be here and to be making these decisions. Too young to be Adam Parrish on the run to God knows where with Ronan Lynch. Too young to be Cabeswater’s sacrifice. Adam cries and cries for the first time in a long time, clinging to a dead thing. He cries so hard he doesn’t notice it changing shape in his grasp until he hears a crack. 

A raven’s egg, the baby’s heart still beating inside. Adam sucks in air and tries to pull himself together. He can’t even feel his fingers, but he can feel that little heart beating erratically, too fast inside the cracked shell. Cabeswater, absent, silent, trying to reach out to him. 

Adam feels his chest go cold, having barely noticed it had warmed up momentarily. The force of it knocks the wind out of him. 

A little beak pushes through the crack, a flap of the shell breaking way above it. Adam carefully pulls it away, bit by bit as the creature uses what little strength it has to emerge. Adam’s eyes burn and his vision goes blurry. He knows. He knows, but he can’t help but to try. The hatchling wriggles out into his arms and its little chest heaves, exhausted from the effort. Adam brings it closer, trying to shield it from the cold. It shuffles into his shirt and they breathe in tandem for a few beats. 

Then Adam watches, heartbroken, as life leaves its eyes once again. He feels its heart fail as his own, feels it breathe its last, feels it shudder and go still.

And then Adam is alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Belated Birthday, Adam Parrish. <3 I'm sorry I gotta do you like this.
> 
> Regrettably, this is not an update:
> 
> Chapter 7 has been heavily edited - it is now not one, not two, but three separate chapters (chapters 7, 8, and 9). If you find yourself lost moving forward, go back and read those chapters.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love; comments are life.  
> Kudos end pain; kudos end strife. 
> 
> Adam will kiss a sunflower for your trouble or something. 
> 
> <3
> 
> Come bother me on tumblr: 
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/faerlie-certain


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